Facteurs de risque pour les maladies diarrhéiques chez les enfants à Dakar: Une analyse multi-niveaux avec variables latentes

Abstract

In Senegal, diarrheal diseases are a major burden to child health. Their network of determinants includes a wide range of factors, from different spheres and levels of analysis. The study analyzes these risk factors and their relative role in diarrheal diseases on children from Dakar. It also illustrates a new approach for synthesizing the network of these determinants. A latent class analysis (LCA) is conducted, and the resulting latent variables are subsequently used as explanatory part in a three-level logistic regression. This study confirms that the determinants of diarrhea in children belong to all three levels of analysis and that behavioral factors and neighborhood sanitation play an important role. Results also illustrate the utility of LCA in synthesizing several indicators, so as to create an integrated overall causal image, using parsimonious statistical models.