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Household Food Security and Nutritional Status of Primary School Children in Coastal Areas of Bangladesh.

 Radwanur Rahman Anik Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, Bangladesh

 This cross-sectional study was intended to find out the association between household food security and nutritional status of primary school children in coastal areas. The sample size was 424. The sample population was primary school going children and their respective household heads. The study was done from 1st January to 31st December, 2019. The place of study was 6 areas of 2 coastal thanas of Chittagong, Bangladesh. Analysis was done with IBM SPSS. Socioeconomic and household related data were collected from household head by semi-structured questionnaire after taking proper consent. Household food security was measured by an 11 itemed scale developed from the Household Food Insecurity Assessment Scale. Socioeconomic condition was measured by the Modified Kuppusswami Scale. Nutritional status was assessed by measuring height and weight of the children. The mean age of sample children was found to be 9 years with lowest 5 years to highest 14 years. Most of the families 74.5% were nuclear having less than 5 members. There were average 2 children in 60% of households. Maximum household heads were involved in elementary occupations or business related to fisheries. About 77.6% of them earn 6327 to 18949 taka monthly. Around 65% of households were in the upper lower class according to scale. However, 85.1% of the households were food insecure in some extent. Only 13.02% of children were found malnourished.  of primary school children and household food security level has a strong association (p=0.003). However, household food security was associated with Number of children in a family (p=0.038), educational level of family head (p=0.004), income of the family head (p=0.000) and socioeconomic status of the family (p=0.000). By logistic regression Odds ratio for food insecurity was found 5.716. That means respondents, who were living in food insecure households, were more than 5 times more likely to face malnutrition than those of secured household.