Optimal nutrition during early childhood is crucial for psychosomatic development and for preventing diet-related diseases. However, evidence from Poland highlights significant deviations from recommended dietary practices. The previous Polish Infants and Toddler Nutritional Study conducted in 2016 (PITNUTS 2016) revealed imbalances in nutrient intake among children aged 5–36 months. The aim of this study (PITNUTS 2024) is to assess the diet and nutritional status of infants and children aged 5–72 months, providing a broader understanding of eating behaviours across critical stages of growth and development and allowing evaluation of how dietary practices changed in recent years.

This cross-sectional study will recruit a nationally representative sample of Polish infants and children aged 5 to 72 months using stratified random sampling. Survey interviews will be conducted with parents or legal guardians as proxy reporters for the children. Dietary practices will be evaluated through validated qualitative and quantitative dietary assessments, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation of food consumption and energy and nutrient intake. Dietary data will be collected using the 3 day food record and the survey questionnaire, including a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). Daily energy and nutrient intake will be compared with national dietary standards and WHO guidelines. Dietary patterns will be derived based on the FFQ data. Nutritional status will be assessed based on measured anthropometric parameters. Energy, macro- and micronutrient intake as well as dietary patterns identified among children will be associated with nutritional status, including body mass index z-score and body weight status.

The study has been approved by the ethics board of the Institute of Mother and Child. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants’ parents or legal guardians before the interviews began. The results from this study will be presented at scientific conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals, contributing to nutrition policies in Poland and informing educational materials and dietary consultation services.

NCT06417151, results.

This study aims to assess the feasibility of respondent-driven sampling (RDS) to recruit participants with recent abortion experiences in humanitarian contexts, and describe the composition of the study sample generated with this sampling method.

This was a three-phase mixed-methods community-engaged research study employing an exploratory and explanatory sequential approach. We conducted in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, an interviewer-administered questionnaire on abortion experiences and a health facility assessment.

Bidibidi Refugee Settlement, Uganda and Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya from November 2021 to December 2022.

Using RDS, we recruited 600 participants in Kakuma and 601 participants in Bidibidi with recent abortion experiences. In Kakuma, participants were primarily from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan; participants in Bidibidi were primarily from South Sudan. Most participants in both sites had completed at least some primary school and were not employed.

RDS recruitment dynamics: convergence and bottlenecks on key sociodemographic variables, recruitment and population homophily, reciprocity of social ties, success and experiences recruiting.

There were minor violations of RDS assumptions, particularly regarding assumptions of reciprocity of ties and seed composition independent of sample. In addition, there was a strong tendency of participants to recruit those from the same home country and living within the same camp zone. However, sample proportions for age, home country, marital status, zone of residence and student status reached equilibrium (stabilised) by around 500 participants at each site, and we were able to quickly attain the study sample size.

While the true representativeness of our sample remains unknown, RDS is a practical and effective recruitment method in humanitarian contexts for sensitive topics, particularly for research questions in which no data or sampling frames exist. However, attention to representativeness and community engagement is essential to optimising its application and ensuring success.

Preventing loss of autonomy has become a public health issue due to the increase in healthcare costs associated with ageing. It has become even more pressing with the arrival of the baby-boomer generation. This has given rise to several initiatives. This is the background to the VIVADOM project. The project provides a complete kit for older adults aged 60 years and over living at home. First, the kit includes a technological package (telecare, light path and digital tablet). Then, these older adults benefit from personalised human support provided by postal workers trained in gerontology. The aim of this study will be to carry out a health economic assessment (HEA) of the VIVADOM project as part of the prevention of frailty and/or dependency (by comparing beneficiaries of the complete kit with non-beneficiaries). The comparator will be the fact of not benefiting from the complete kit. In addition, the efficiency of the project in preventing falls and cognitive problems will be studied. We will calculate three incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER) for these three issues.

The economic model used will be the Markov model. Transition probabilities, average costs and average quality-adjusted life year (QALY) will be calculated for the two groups being compared. The ICER will be obtained by dividing the difference in average costs by the difference in average QALYs. Finally, ICERs will be compared with willingness-to-pay (WTP) to assess the efficiency of the system. Thus, the VIVADOM project will be efficient when these ICERs are lower than the WTP. Univariate and probabilistic sensitivity analysis will be carried out to ensure the robustness of the analysis results.

The HEA of the VIVADOM project has been approved by the research unit of the University of Limoges in France. The results will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and presented at relevant national and international conferences.