Can the IYCF indicators such as DDS, MFF and MAD used for assessing diet quality among children above 2 years of age, if yes -cutoffs to consider, and if no, then which parameters could be substituted. Kindly suggest.
In previous studies I have used the Infant and Young Child Feeding Index (ICFI) Scoring Table:
https://datacompass.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/202/1/ICFI_Scoring_Table.PDF
This was based on a helpful article here: https://www.ennonline.net/fex/47/iycf
You might find this a useful starting point. However, I last used this quite a few years a go and so it would also be great to hear if other forum members have a more updated tool to suggest.
Answered:
3 years agoI rather like the ICFI but have tended to use it for the IYCF age-group (birth to two years) rather than the under five years age-group although i think there is no great reson why it should not be extended for use with the wider age range.
ICFI is simple to use and works well with small sample sizes compared to many of the WHO IYCF indicators. The WHO's Minimum Acceptable Diet (MAD) indicator is similar to ICFI and might be used instead or picked over to revise the ICFI scoring table. A combination of MAD and Exclusive breastfeeding to 6 months (EBF) could be used. I would decompose MAD & EBF into dimension specific ("diagnostic") indicators as is done with ICFI and shown here.
We have also used IYCF in RAM and S3M surveys and have picked over the consumed food-groups (DDS) data to look at consumption of key nutrients (the standard food groups make this easy) ... data users such as local MoHs and UNICEF have found this useful.
I hope this is of soem use.
Answered:
3 years ago