Patricia Kariger

University of California, Berkeley | UCB

A regulated stress response is essential for healthy child growth and development trajectories. We conducted a cluster-randomized trial in rural Bangladesh (funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01590095) to assess the effects of an integrated nutritional, water, sanitation, and handwashing intervention on child healt...

Background To assess the neurodevelopment of children under three years, a multinational team of subject matter experts (SMEs) led by the World Health Organization (WHO) developed the Global Scales for Early Development (GSED). The measures include 1) a caregiver-reported short form (SF), 2) a directly administered long form (LF), and 3) a caregive...

Introduction Children’s early development is affected by caregiving experiences, with lifelong health and well-being implications. Governments and civil societies need population-based measures to monitor children’s early development and ensure that children receive the care needed to thrive. To this end, the WHO developed the Global Scales for Ear...

Introduction With the ratification of the Sustainable Development Goals, there is an increased emphasis on early childhood development (ECD) and well-being. The WHO led Global Scales for Early Development (GSED) project aims to provide population and programmatic level measures of ECD for 0–3 years that are valid, reliable and have psychometrically...

Background Children with low birth weight (LBW) are at risk of linear growth faltering and developmental deficits. Evidence suggests that early child stimulation and care reflected as responsive caregiving and opportunities for learning can promote development. The current analysis aimed to measure the extent to which linear growth and early child...

Background Children with low birth weight (LBW) are at risk of linear growth faltering and developmental deficits. Evidence suggests that early child stimulation and care reflected as responsive caregiving and opportunities for learning can promote development. The current analysis aimed to measure the extent to which linear growth and early child...

Importance: A regulated stress response is essential for healthy trajectories, but the integrated effects of early childhood environmental and nutritional interventions on stress physiology are unknown. Objective: To assess the effects of a combined nutritional, water, sanitation, and handwashing intervention on physiological stress response, oxida...

Background: Previously, we demonstrated that a water, sanitation, handwashing, and nutritional intervention improved linear growth and was unexpectedly associated with shortened childhood telomere length (TL) (Lin et al., 2017). Here, we assessed the association between TL and growth. Methods: We measured relative TL in whole blood from 713 childre...

Background: The early childhood years provide an important window of opportunity to build strong foundations for future development. One impediment to global progress is a lack of population-based measurement tools to provide reliable estimates of developmental status. We aimed to field test and validate a newly created tool for this purpose. Met...

Background: In a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with 8402 stable low birthweight (LBW) infants, majority being late preterm or term small for gestational age, community-initiated KMC (ciKMC) showed a significant improvement in survival. However, the effect of ciKMC on neurodevelopment is unclear. This is important to elucidate as children born w...

Malaria is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among children under five years of age, with most cases occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa. Children in this age group in Africa are at greatest risk worldwide for developmental deficits. There are research gaps in quantifying the risks of mild malaria cases, understanding the pathways linking mala...

In many low‐ and middle‐income countries, young children learn a mother tongue or indigenous language at home before entering the formal education system where they will need to understand and speak a country's official language(s). Thus, assessments of children before school age, conducted in a nation's official language, may not fully reflect a c...

Background Renewed global commitment to the improvement of early child development outcomes, as evidenced by the focus of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4, highlights an increased need for reliable and valid measures to evaluate preventive and interventional efforts designed to affect change. Our objective was to create a new tool,...

We used a randomized, controlled study to evaluate a government program in Malawi, which aimed to support child development by improving quality in community-based, informal preschools through teacher training, financial incentives, and group-based parenting support. Children in the integrated intervention arm (teacher training and parenting) had s...

Background Poor nutrition and hygiene make children vulnerable to delays in growth and development. We aimed to assess the effects of water quality, sanitation, handwashing, and nutritional interventions individually or in combination on the cognitive, motor, and language development of children in rural Bangladesh. Methods In this cluster-randomi...

Background Poor nutrition and infectious diseases can prevent children from reaching their developmental potential. We aimed to assess the effects of improvements in water, sanitation, handwashing, and nutrition on early child development in rural Kenya. Methods In this cluster-randomised controlled trial, we enrolled pregnant women in their secon...

Background: Poor nutrition and exposure to faecal contamination are associated with diarrhoea and growth faltering, both of which have long-term consequences for child health. We aimed to assess whether water, sanitation, handwashing, and nutrition interventions reduced diarrhoea or growth faltering. Methods: The WASH Benefits cluster-randomised...

Background The Nutrition Embedded Evaluation Programme Impact Evaluation (NEEP-IE) study is a cluster randomised controlled trial designed to evaluate the impact of a childcare centre-based integrated nutritional and agricultural intervention on the diets, nutrition and development of young children in Malawi. The intervention includes activities t...

Aims Over 200 million children under 5 are not reaching their developmental potential. At present, no tools exist that can measure indicators of children’s development in meaningful, valid and culturally comparable ways within or across populations. This study aimed to identify items within validated tools utilised in low and middle income (LAMI) s...

Enteric infections are common during the first years of life in low-income countries and contribute to growth faltering with long-term impairment of health and development. Water quality, sanitation, handwashing and nutritional interventions can independently reduce enteric infections and growth faltering. There is little evidence that directly com...

Background: Children's development is affected by the interplay of internal and external factors and changes in one factor can precipitate changes in multiple developmental domains. Aims: The aim of this study was to test a theoretical model of children's development using structural equation modeling. Study design: This was designed as a subs...

Indicators of family care for development are essential for ascertaining whether families are providing their children with an environment that leads to positive developmental outcomes. This project aimed to develop indicators from a set of items, measuring family care practices and resources important for caregiving, for use in epidemiologic surve...

Gradients across socio-economic position exist for many measures of children's health and development in higher-income countries. These associations may not be consistent, however, among the millions of children living in lower- and middle-income countries. Our objective was to examine child development and growth in young children across socio-eco...

Schoolchildren in Nigeria are rarely targeted by micronutrient interventions. We completed a 6-mo, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to determine the effects of a multi-micronutrient beverage on biochemical and anthropometric indicators of nutritional status among schoolchildren participating in a pilot school feeding program in Nasarawa State...

There is some evidence that sleep patterns may be affected by iron deficiency anemia but the role of iron in sleep has not been tested in a randomized iron supplementation trial. We investigated the effect of iron supplementation on maternal reports of sleep in infants in 2 randomized, placebo-controlled trials from Pemba Island, Zanzibar, and Nepa...

Nutritionally at-risk children suffer delays in physical growth and motor and language development. Infectious diseases such as malaria pose an additional risk. We examined the cross-sectional relationships among malaria infection, hemoglobin (Hb) concentration, length-for-age Z-scores (LAZ), motor activity, behavior, and motor and language develop...

Infants with iron deficiency anemia (IDA) and stunting explore and interact less with their environment. They may also be fatigued more often, suggesting their sleep may be affected. It is unclear whether fatigue in these infants is due to poor nighttime sleep or if it is compensated for with frequent naps or longer sleep. In 2 studies from Pemba I...

Motor activity improves cognitive and social-emotional development through a child's exploration of his or her physical and social environment. This study assessed anemia, iron deficiency, hemoglobin (Hb), length-for-age Z-score (LAZ), and malaria infection as predictors of motor activity in 771 children aged 5-19 mo. Trained observers conducted 2-...

Iron and zinc deficiencies have been associated with delayed motor development in nutritionally at-risk children, albeit inconsistently. In this community-based, randomized double-blind trial, iron+folic acid (FeFA) (12.5 mg Fe + 50 mug folic acid), zinc (Zn) (10 mg), and iron+folic acid+zinc (FeFA+Zn) supplements or a placebo were given daily for...

The acquisition of bipedal locomotion is an important aspect of gross motor development that ultimately affects the cognition of young children. Evidence for associations between nutrition-related variables and walking acquisition exist; however, questions remain about the importance of weight-for-length and dietary factors and the independent cont...

Locomotion allows infants to explore their environment, promoting development in other domains. Motor progression involves biological systems and experiential factors. Nutritional deficiencies could interfere with systems involved in locomotion. This study examined the associations between height-for-age (HAZ), weight-for-height (WHZ) Z-scores and...

Experimental and quasi-experimental studies on the effects of nutritional supplements on development in young children generally include snapshots of development. Developmental outcomes are better revealed when multiple assessments are made over time. We compared the effects of a micronutrient intervention with and without supplementary energy on t...

Esta reseña focaliza las ventajas y desventajas que ofrece la lactancia para el desarrollo mental del niño. Los estudios se refieren a tres temas: 1) correlación entre tipo de alimentación y rendimiento en diversas pruebas de desarrollo mental antes y después de los primeros tres años de vida; 2) prevención de deficiencias de nutrimentos que afecta...

The literature reviewed in this article suggests that breastfeeding positively influences cognitive development. Studies comparing the effects of early feeding methods on cognition consistently show mental test score advantages for breastfed infants over bottle-fed subjects. Also, breastfeeding may function as a buffer against adverse developmental...

Degree granted in Human Development. "[Page 72 is] not included in the original manuscript and [is] unavailable from the author or university"--Half title. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Davis, 2001.