The candidate plans to develop a dissertaton project which will use a positive deviance fromework to identify factors associated with nutritional resiliency in a cohort of more than 2,200 Filipino children from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutritional Survey (CLHNS). The CLHNS cohort was first identified at birth in 1983-84, and the children were followed every tow (2) months for the first two years of life. Two additional rounds of data were collected in 1991 and 1994. Detailed information on characteristics of the children, mothers, households and communities was gathered in each round. The sample comprises households from both urban and rural areas around the city of Cebu in the Philippines, and includes children from a broad range of socioeconomic backgrounds, although the majority are poor. Children's physical growth is believed to have broad implications for child well-being. In particular, it has been hypothesized that there is a strong link between malnutrition and cognitive development, although the nature if the relationship is not well understood. In order to access whether factors which predict positive deviance are more broadly protective of child well-being, a second component of this project will evaluate whether factors which appear to be protective for children's nutritional status also predict their cognitive performance. The main objectives of the proposed dissertation project are: to identify characteristics of children, mothers, households and communities associated with nutritional positive deviance--i.e., healthy growth relative to other disadvantaged children--between birth and age 11; and to identify factors associated with cognitive well-being among disadvantaged children, and determine the extent to which these protective factors overlap with those associated with positive deviance.
