The seasonal relationships between household dietary diversity and child growth in a rural Timor-Leste community.

Both child growth and dietary diversity are poor in rural Timor-Leste. The rainy season is associated with food scarcity, yet the association between seasonal scarcity, food diversity, and child growth is underdocumented. This study assesses the relationship between household dietary diversity and children's standardized growth across the 2018 food-scarce (April-May; post-rainy period) and post-harvest (October) seasons in the agricultural community of Natarbora, on the south-coastal plains of Timor-Leste.

Determinants of objectively measured physical activity in rural East Timorese children.

Objectives: The human juvenile period evolved as a period of learning and physical development in a family environment that subsidizes the costs of these processes. Children allocate energy to physical activity, maintenance, and growth. How energy is allocated has consequences for adult body size and other life-history traits.

Growth curves and the international standard: How children's growth reflects challenging conditions in rural Timor-Leste.

Objectives: Population-specific growth references are important in understanding local growth variation, especially in developing countries where child growth is poor and the need for effective health interventions is high. In this article, we use mixed longitudinal data to calculate the first growth curves for rural East Timorese children to identify where, during development, deviation from the international standards occurs.

Materials And Methods: Over an eight-year period, 1,245 children from two ecologically distinct rural areas of Timor-Leste were measured a total of 4,904 times.

Household resources and seasonal patterns of child growth in rural Timor-Leste.

Objectives: This study aimed to determine through detailed contextual investigation the effects of seasonal resource shortages, and household and individual level differences, on child growth in rural Timor-Leste. We compared trends in growth across two rural Timorese villages with different ecologies.

Methods: Heads of 104 households in Natarbora, Timor-Leste, were interviewed and resource levels assessed during the food shortage season.