How much does it cost to implement the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative training step in the United States and Mexico?

The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) has been shown to increase breastfeeding rates, improving maternal and child health and driving down healthcare costs via the benefits of breastfeeding. Despite its clear public health and economic benefits, one key challenge of implementing the BFHI is procuring funding to sustain the program. To address this need and help healthcare stakeholders advocate for funds, we developed a structured method to estimate the first-year cost of implementing BFHI staff training, using the United States (US) and Mexico as case studies.

Using Household Expenditure Surveys for Comparable and Replicable Nutritional Analysis: Evidence from México.

In this study, we explore how to use household expenditures and income surveys (HEIS) to provide replicable and comparable measures of nutrients availability at the population level. Our method formalizes the common practice in the literature and consists of three steps: identification of relevant food categories, pairing of food contents food groups in HEIS data, and calculation of the typical amount of nutrients by food group. We illustrate the usage of the method with Mexican data and provide a publicly available data set to readily convert food purchases into six nutrients: calories, proteins, vitamins A and C, iron, and zinc.

Estimating the costs for implementing a maternity leave cash transfer program for women employed in the informal sector in Brazil and Ghana.

Background: Maternity leave policies are designed to protect gender equality and the health of mothers in the workforce and their children. However, maternity leave schemes are often linked to jobs in the formal sector economy. In low- and middle-income countries a large share of women work in the informal sector, and are not eligible to such benefit.

Migration as a determinant of childhood obesity in the United States and Latin America.

International migration has economic and health implications. The acculturation process to the host country may be linked to childhood obesity. We use the Community Energy Balance (CEB) framework to analyze the relationship between migration and childhood obesity in Mexican households with international migrants.

Urban poverty and nutrition challenges associated with accessibility to a healthy diet: a global systematic literature review.

Background: There is an increasing global trend towards urbanization. In general, there are less food access issues in urban than rural areas, but this "urban advantage" does not benefit the poorest who face disproportionate barriers to accessing healthy food and have an increased risk of malnutrition.

Objectives: This systematic literature review aimed to assess urban poverty as a determinant of access to a healthy diet, and to examine the contribution of urban poverty to the nutritional status of individuals.

Food insecurity measurement and prevalence estimates during the COVID-19 pandemic in a repeated cross-sectional survey in Mexico.

Objective: To validate the telephone modality of the Latin American and Caribbean Food Security Scale (ELCSA) included in three waves of a phone survey to estimate the monthly household food insecurity prevalence during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico.

Design: We examined the reliability and internal validity of the ELCSA scale in three repeated waves of cross-sectional surveys with Rasch models. We estimated the monthly prevalence of food insecurity in the general population and in households with and without children and compared them with a national 2018 survey.

A longitudinal study of height gaps among Mexican children: Disparities and social inequity.

Rationale: Health outcomes such as height are important determinants of social inequities.

Objective: We assess height gaps in Mexico among boys and girls from distinct subpopulation groups over time.

Method: We use longitudinal data from the first three waves of the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS) to analyze children's height differentials by gender and by indigenous and poverty status over 7-10 years.

Costs of maternity leave to support breastfeeding; Brazil, Ghana and Mexico.

Objective: To develop a method to assess the cost of extending the duration of maternity leave for formally-employed women at the national level and apply it in Brazil, Ghana and Mexico.

Methods: We adapted a World Bank costing method into a five-step method to estimate the costs of extending the length of maternity leave mandates. Our method used the unit cost of maternity leave based on working women's weekly wages; the number of additional weeks of maternity leave to be analysed for a given year; and the weighted population of women of reproductive and legal working age in a given country in that year.

Costing of actions to safeguard vulnerable Mexican households with young children from the consequences of COVID-19 social distancing measures.

COVID-19 has imposed unprecedented challenges to society. As the pandemic evolves, the social distancing measures that have been globally enforced, while essential, are having undesirable socioeconomic side effects particularly among vulnerable populations. In Mexico, families who depend upon informal employment face increased threats to their wellbeing, and households who in addition have young children may face long-term consequences.

A systematic review of costing studies for implementing and scaling-up breastfeeding interventions: what do we know and what are the gaps?

Despite the well-established evidence that breastfeeding improves maternal and child health outcomes, global rates of exclusive breastfeeding remain low. Cost estimates can inform stakeholders about the financial resources needed to scale up interventions to ultimately improve breastfeeding outcomes in low-, middle- and high-income countries. To inform the development of comprehensive costing frameworks, this systematic review aimed to (1) identify costing studies for implementing or scaling-up breastfeeding interventions, (2) assess the quality of identified costing studies and (3) examine the availability of cost data to identify gaps that need to be addressed through future research.

Costing a Maternity Leave Cash Transfer to Support Breastfeeding Among Informally Employed Mexican Women.

Background: Investing in maternity protection for working women is an important social equity mechanism. Addressing the maternity leave needs of women employed in the informal sector economy should be a priority as more than half of women in Latin America, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa are employed in this sector.

Objective: To develop a costing methodology framework to assess the financial feasibility, at the national level, of implementing a maternity cash transfer for informally employed women.

Return Migration to Mexico: Does Health Matter?

We use data from three rounds of the Mexican Family Life Survey to examine whether migrants in the United States returning to Mexico in the period 2005-2012 have worse health than those remaining in the United States. Despite extensive interest by demographers in health-related selection, this has been a neglected area of study in the literature on U.S.

After spouses depart: emotional wellbeing among nonmigrant Mexican mothers.

Nonmigrant family members play a central role in facilitating Mexico-U.S. migration by maintaining families, sustaining social relationships, and overseeing household economic organization in sending communities.

The consequences of migration to the United States for short-term changes in the health of Mexican immigrants.

Although many studies have attempted to examine the consequences of Mexico-U.S. migration for Mexican immigrants' health, few have had adequate data to generate the appropriate comparisons.

Links between socio-economic circumstances and changes in smoking behavior in the Mexican population: 2002-2010.

While deleterious consequences of smoking on health have been widely publicized, in many developing countries, smoking prevalence is high and increasing. Little is known about the dynamics underlying changes in smoking behavior. This paper examines socio-economic and demographic characteristics associated with smoking initiation and quitting in Mexico between 2002 and 2010.

Links between childhood and adult social circumstances and obesity and hypertension in the Mexican population.

Objectives: This study examines links between early life circumstances and adult socioeconomic status and obesity and hypertension in the adult Mexican population.

Method: We use data from the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS) collected in 2002 for people aged 20 or older (N = 14,280).

Results: We found that men with low education and women with more education have significantly lower obesity.

Migrant networks and pathways to child obesity in Mexico.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: 1) to assess the link between migrant networks and becoming overweight or obese and 2) to explore the pathways by which migrant networks may contribute to the increasing overweight and obese population of children in Mexico. Using two waves of the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS), we find that children and adolescents (ages 3 to 15) living in households with migrant networks are at an increased risk of becoming overweight or obese over the period of observation, relative to their peers with no migrant networks. Sedentary behavior and household-level measures of economic wellbeing explain some of the association between networks and changes in weight status, but the role of extended networks remains significant.

Investments, time preferences and public transfers paid to women.

The literature suggests men and women may have different preferences. This paper exploits a social experiment in which women in treatment households were given a large public cash transfer (PROGRESA). In an effort to disentangle the effect of additional income in the household from the effect of changing the distribution of income within the household, the impact of PROGRESA income on savings and investments decisions is compared with all other income sources (after taking into account participation in the program).

The healthy migrant effect: new findings from the Mexican Family Life Survey.

Objectives: We used nationally representative longitudinal data from the Mexican Family Life Survey to determine whether recent migrants from Mexico to the United States are healthier than other Mexicans. Previous research has provided little scientific evidence that tests the "healthy migrant" hypothesis.

Methods: Estimates were derived from logistic regressions of whether respondents moved to the United States between surveys in 2002 and 2005, by gender and urban versus rural residence.

The role of maternal cognitive ability on child health.

Little is known about the mechanisms through which mother's cognitive ability operates in enhancing her children's health. This paper analyzes how maternal returns to cognitive ability on children's height reflect contemporaneous endowments and childhood background of the mother. Results suggest that maternal returns to cognitive ability on child height are less likely to reflect observed mother's childhood endowments as measured by parental transmission of knowledge or school quality, but are more likely to be associated with learning to be a mother, and with a better capacity to take advantage of household and community available resources.