Browsing by Subject "nutritional status"

Childhood health is strongly connected with the health later in life. Healthy children are likely to grow up as healthy adults and health in general relates to many positive dimensions of life. However, a shock such as civil war encountered in childhood can have long lasting consequences for later health. The aim of the thesis was to examine how the civil war of 1918 in Finland impacted in the children’s health from four different schools in Helsinki. In addition, the thesis examined were the children’s living environment and previous disease history significant for the health and did there occur differences between the health of girls and boys. The data of the thesis consists of 1 781 elementary school children’s school health records from Kallio, Vallila, Töölö and Tehtaankatu schools in Helsinki, Finland. The data of the thesis is a subsample of historical data which consists of approximately 18 000 Helsinki elementary school student’s health records from the period of 1910-1932. The thesis describes the children’s disease history before the school age and the diseases that occurred during the school years. Height and weight growth curves were formed from the data to visualize the growth patterns of the children over time. In addition, height and weight curves were formed for three different birth cohorts that had gone to school before, during and after the civil war of 1918 to examine the possible differences in growth between the cohorts. Lastly, linear regression analysis was used to analyse were the age, the place of birth, the year of inspection, previous disease history and the school connected with the height and weight growth of the children. The height and weight growth curves showed that the children’s weight and height growth declined in the years 1918-1919. When comparing three birth cohorts, the children who went to school during the civil war of 1918 were shorter than those who went to school before and after the conflict. The most typical diseases that occurred among the children before the school age were measles and whooping cough. Based on the results of the regression analyses the girl’s height growth declined in the year 1919 with 0.82 cm which can indicate that the shock of 1918 became evident in the girl’s height growth in 1919. Having had measles before the school age reduced the height and weight of the boys with 0.86 cm and 0.77 kg. When height’s and weight’s standard deviation scores were regressed with the interaction of boy and measles variables, the connection of the interaction was negative and statistically significant indicating differences between boys and girls: measles was in connected with the boy’s height and weight but not girl’s. Boys who went Töölö and Tehtaankatu schools were taller and heavier than those who went to Kallio and Vallila schools and the results were statistically significant. Among girls, there were no statistically significant differences between students from different schools. The height and weight curves evidently showed that the civil war of 1918 had a negative affect for the children’s growth and therefore also for their health. Results of the regression analyses indicate, that for girl’s height the meaning of the civil war of 1918 was more significant than for boys. For boys, on the other hand, the meaning of having had measles before the school was significant as it reduced their height and weight growth. However, the mechanism behind the measles and reduced growth is ambiguous and there can be various explanations for it. For boys there were also statistically significant differences between students from different schools which reinforces the previous findings from the early 20th century studies concerning the health of the elementary school children. It is not however clear why the differences were only seen among boys and not girls and it is possible that a bigger sample size would have given different results.