Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-2020
Publisher
Elsevier
Source Publication
Heliyon
Source ISSN
2405-8440
Abstract
Background
Functional difficulties have long-term implications for children's physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and academic growth and development. Although the subject of functional difficulties has received enough scholarly attention in the developed world, few studies have addressed the issue in Ghana. Therefore, the study aimed to regress child, maternal and household and geographical level factors associated with the functional difficulty of children in Ghana.
Method
We analysed the 2017/18 multiple indicator cluster survey dataset. The study sample consists of weighted cases of 21,871 children within the ages of 5–17 years. Summary statistics were produced for the study variables. Bivariate analyses were performed to select significant correlates for the multivariate analysis. We accounted for sample design and weight before using Poisson regression techniques to do the bivariate and multivariate analysis.
Results
These factors were significantly associated with functional difficulties among 5–17 years old children in Ghana: not covered with health insurance, mothers who have a functional difficulty and those without information on their functional difficulty status, and children who dwelt in richer households compared to the richest households. Compared to the northern region, children from the remaining nine regions in Ghana were more likely to have had a child functional difficulty.
Conclusion
Given the results, the government of Ghana and other development partners should promote policies and programs to reduce the consequences of disability or functional difficulties in children by taking into consideration factors like mothers' functional difficulty, access to health insurance, and regional and economic disparities in Ghana.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Dey, Nutifaga Eugene Yaw; Dziwornu, Emmanuel; Frimpong-Manso, Kwabena; Duah, Henry Ofori; and Agbadi, Pascal, "Correlates of Child Functional Difficulties Status in Ghana: A Further Analysis of the 2017/18 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey" (2020). College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications. 1182.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/nursing_fac/1182
Comments
Published version. Heliyon, Vol. 6, No. 12 (2020). DOI. This article is © The Authors, published by Elsevier Ltd. Used with permission.
Henry Duah was affiliated with FOCOS Orthopaedic Hospital, Accra, Ghana at the time of publication.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-nd/4.0/).