Publications by authors named "Leah Bevis"
Trace soil minerals are a critical determinant of both crop productivity and the mineral concentration of crops, therefore potentially impacting the nutritional status of human populations relying on those crops. We link health data from nearly 0.3 million children and one million adult women across India with over 27 million soil tests drawn from a nationwide soil health program.
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- Soil zinc (Zn) deficiency in Nepal negatively affects child health, particularly contributing to child stunting due to low crop yields and zinc concentration in food.
- Research shows a causal link between soil Zn deficiency and child stunting in Nepal's Tarai region, indicating that improving soil zinc levels can significantly benefit children's growth.
- A small increase in plant-available soil Zn can lead to a reduction in child stunting rates by 1 to 7.5 percentage points, and this finding is supported by rigorous statistical testing.
Background: The WHO-UNICEF minimum dietary diversity (MDD) indicator for children aged 6-23 mo is a global monitoring indicator used to track multi-year population-level changes in dietary quality, but the influence of seasonality on MDD estimates remains unclear.
Objectives: To examine how seasonality of data collection may influence population-level MDD estimates and inferences about MDD changes over multiple survey years.
Methods: We selected countries with 3 or more consecutive years of MDD data collection, including continuous national Demographic Health Surveys in Senegal (2012-2017; = 12,183) and Peru (2005-2016; = 35,272) and the Policy and Science for Health, Agriculture, and Nutrition sentinel site seasonal surveys (covering 3 seasons/y) in Nepal (2013-2016; = 1309).
Calcium (Ca), iron (Fe), selenium (Se), and zinc (Zn) deficiencies are widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, with severe implications for human health. In Uganda, where the predominant diet depends heavily on plant-based staples, crop mineral concentration is an important component of dietary mineral intake. Studies assessing the risk of nutrient deficiency or the effectiveness of nutrient-focused interventions often estimate dietary mineral intake using food composition tables that are based on crops grown in developed countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Zinc (Zn) deficiency is one of the most common micronutrient deficiencies worldwide. Accurate estimates of Zn intake would facilitate the design and implementation of effective nutritional interventions.
Objective: We sought to improve estimates of dietary Zn intake by evaluating staple crop Zn content and dietary Zn consumption by children under the age of 5 in 9 rural districts of Uganda.