Despite improvements in global child health within the last three decades, under-5 mortality remains significantly high in Sub-Saharan and Asia. Both regions did not achieve the MDG target of reducing under-5 mortality by two thirds by 2015. The underlying causes of under-5 mortality differ...

Anthropometric indicators, in particular the height for a particular age, are found to be lowest in South Asia compared to other geopolitical regions. However, despite the close relationship between undernutrition and mortality rates, the highest mortality rates are concentrated in sub-Saharan...

Models with structured additive predictor provide a very broad and rich framework for complex regression modeling. They can deal simultaneously with nonlinear covariate effects and time trends, unit- or cluster-specific heterogeneity, spatial heterogeneity and complex interactions between...