Studying Mothers and Child’s
Health
Demography,
UNAIR
Research
Team
Gets
DHS
Fellowship
UNAIR NEWS – The position of women and men in a household is
usually different. The women will have less power than the
men. In terms of health, the women usually have little or no
power in making a decision regarding their or their children’s
health.
So, what if the women have better social position, better
education, more control for the resources including finance
and health? It is being studied by three lecturers of
Universitas Airlangga.
The lecturers are Susy K. Sebayang, Ph.D. (S-1 Public Health
PDD UNAIR Banyuwangi), Ferry Efendi, Ph.D. (Faculty of
Nursing), and Erni Astutik (S-1 Public Health PDD UNAIR
Banyuwangi). Three of them conduct the research with support
of United States Agency of International Development (USAID)
through The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Fellowship
Program.
DHS program is an international program to collect demographic
and health data in various countries with the same standards.
In Indonesia the program is named Indonesian Demographic and
Health Survey (SDKI).
“USAID supports the researchers from various developing
countries through the feelowship program in analyzing further
the DHS data, integrating the data to educational system and
conducting capacity buiding in their own organizations,” said
Susy during interview.
After receiving supports from USAID, the team was requested to
send a research proposal in line with the vision and missions
of DHS. In the research, the team will conduct analysis on
women empowerment in ASEAN ((Association of South East Asian
Nation) countries.
“Why ASEAN? Currently, there is ASEAN Economic Community. Some
universities in ASEAN, including UNAIR, are included in AUN
(ASEAN University Networking). Therefore, it is only
appropriate if topics on ASEAN are promoted in college
teaching,” said Susy.
The groups of women to be studied are matured and young
mothers aged 15-19 years old. The team will study the women
empowerment development from both groups as well as the
impacts to their health and their children’s health. After the
analysis, Susy and team hoped that the research can be used by
the government to make policies on women empowerment and
reproductive, maternal, neonatal and child health improvement.
In 2017, there are six teams from six countries supported by
USAID. They are from Egypt, Nepal, Pakistan, The Philippines,
Cambodia and Indonesia. UNAIR research team is the only team
from Indonesia. Their success in proposal selection was
announced last Thursday, January 12.
As DHS scholarship awardees, the team will take part in two
workshops on data analysis. The workshops will be held on
March 6-17, 2017 and April 25-May 4, 2017. In the first
workshop, the team will be introduced to DHS data and research
question formulation. In the second workshop, the team will
finalize the research.
From the knowledge they get from the workshop, they have plans
to analyze and publish the DHS data. “The team hoped that we
can get to international reputable journal Scopus indexed,”
said the doctor of Sydney University, Australia.
Author: Defrina Sukma S.
Editor : Faridah hari