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Measuring socioeconomic inequalities in relation to malaria risk: a comparison of metrics in rural Uganda

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Main author:	Tusting, Lucy S.
Other authors:	Rek, John Arinaitwe, Emmanuel Staedke, Sarah G. Kamya, Moses R. Bottomley, Christian Johnston, Deborah Lines, Jo Dorsey, Grant Lindsay, Steve W.
Format:	Journal Article
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id	eprints-21515
recordtype	eprints
institution	SOAS, University of London
collection	SOAS Research Online
language	English
language_search	English
description	Socioeconomic position (SEP) is an important risk factor for malaria, but there is no consensus on how to measure SEP in malaria studies. We evaluated the relative strength of four indicators of SEP in predicting malaria risk in Nagongera, Uganda. 318 children resident in 100 households were followed for 36 months to measure parasite prevalence routinely every three months and malaria incidence by passive case detection. Household SEP was determined using: (1) two wealth indices, (2) income, (3) occupation and (4) education. Wealth Index I (reference) included only asset ownership variables. Wealth Index II additionally included food security and house construction variables, which may directly affect malaria. In multivariate analysis, only Wealth Index II and income were associated with the human biting rate, only Wealth Indices I and II were associated with parasite prevalence and only caregiver’s education was associated with malaria incidence. This is the first evaluation of metrics beyond wealth and consumption indices for measuring the association between SEP and malaria. The wealth index still predicted malaria risk after excluding variables directly associated with malaria, but the strength of association was lower. In this setting, wealth indices, income and education were stronger predictors of socioeconomic differences in malaria risk than occupation.
format	Journal Article
author	Tusting, Lucy S.
author_facet	Tusting, Lucy S. Rek, John Arinaitwe, Emmanuel Staedke, Sarah G. Kamya, Moses R. Bottomley, Christian Johnston, Deborah Lines, Jo Dorsey, Grant Lindsay, Steve W.
authorStr	Tusting, Lucy S.
author_letter	Tusting, Lucy S.
author2	Rek, John Arinaitwe, Emmanuel Staedke, Sarah G. Kamya, Moses R. Bottomley, Christian Johnston, Deborah Lines, Jo Dorsey, Grant Lindsay, Steve W.
author2Str	Rek, John Arinaitwe, Emmanuel Staedke, Sarah G. Kamya, Moses R. Bottomley, Christian Johnston, Deborah Lines, Jo Dorsey, Grant Lindsay, Steve W.
title	Measuring socioeconomic inequalities in relation to malaria risk: a comparison of metrics in rural Uganda
publisher	American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
publishDate	2016
url	https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/21515/