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Evaluating preschool linear growth velocities: an interim reference illustrated in Nepal
- Swetha Manohar, Elizabeth Colantuoni, Andrew Lucian Thorne-Lyman, Binod Shrestha, Ramesh Kant Adhikari, Angela KC, Abhigyna Bhattarai, Keith Parker West, Jr.
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- Journal:
- Public Health Nutrition / Volume 26 / Issue 12 / December 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 07 November 2023, pp. 2704-2716
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Objective:
An annualised linear growth velocity (LGV) reference can identify groups of children at risk of growing poorly. As a single velocity reference for all preschool ages does not exist, we present an interim tool, derived from published, normative growth studies, for detecting growth faltering, illustrating its use in Nepali preschoolers.
Design:The WHO Child Growth Velocity Standard was adapted to derive 12-month increments and conjoined to the Tanner-Whitehouse Height Velocity Reference data yielding contiguous preschool linear growth annualised velocities. Linear restricted cubic spline regressions were fit to generate sex-specific median and standard normal deviate velocities for ages 0 through 59 months. LGV Z-scores (LGVZ) were constructed, and growth faltering was defined as LGVZ < –2.
Setting:Use of the reference was illustrated with data from Nepal’s Tarai region.
Participants:Children contributing the existing growth references and a cohort of 4276 Nepali children assessed from 2013 to 2016.
Results:Fitted, smoothed LGV reference curves displayed monotonically decreasing 12-month LGV, exemplified by male/female annual medians of 26·4/25·3, 12·1/12·7, 9·1/9·4, 7·7/7·8 and 7/7 cm/years, starting at 0, 12, 24, 36 and 48 months, respectively. Applying the referent, 31·1 %, 28·6 % and 29·3 % of Nepali children <6, 6–11 and 12–23 months of age, and ∼6 % of children 24–59 months, exhibited growth faltering. Under 24 months, faltering velocities were more prevalent in girls (34·4 %) than boys (25·3 %) (P < 0·05) but comparable (∼6 %) in older preschoolers.
Conclusions:A LGV reference, concatenated from extant data, can identify preschool groups at-risk of growth faltering. Application and limitations are discussed.
Contributors
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- By Rose Teteki Abbey, K. C. Abraham, David Tuesday Adamo, LeRoy H. Aden, Efrain Agosto, Victor Aguilan, Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, Charanjit Kaur AjitSingh, Dorothy B E A Akoto, Giuseppe Alberigo, Daniel E. Albrecht, Ruth Albrecht, Daniel O. Aleshire, Urs Altermatt, Anand Amaladass, Michael Amaladoss, James N. Amanze, Lesley G. Anderson, Thomas C. Anderson, Victor Anderson, Hope S. Antone, María Pilar Aquino, Paula Arai, Victorio Araya Guillén, S. Wesley Ariarajah, Ellen T. Armour, Brett Gregory Armstrong, Atsuhiro Asano, Naim Stifan Ateek, Mahmoud Ayoub, John Alembillah Azumah, Mercedes L. García Bachmann, Irena Backus, J. Wayne Baker, Mieke Bal, Lewis V. Baldwin, William Barbieri, António Barbosa da Silva, David Basinger, Bolaji Olukemi Bateye, Oswald Bayer, Daniel H. Bays, Rosalie Beck, Nancy Elizabeth Bedford, Guy-Thomas Bedouelle, Chorbishop Seely Beggiani, Wolfgang Behringer, Christopher M. Bellitto, Byard Bennett, Harold V. Bennett, Teresa Berger, Miguel A. Bernad, Henley Bernard, Alan E. Bernstein, Jon L. Berquist, Johannes Beutler, Ana María Bidegain, Matthew P. Binkewicz, Jennifer Bird, Joseph Blenkinsopp, Dmytro Bondarenko, Paulo Bonfatti, Riet en Pim Bons-Storm, Jessica A. Boon, Marcus J. Borg, Mark Bosco, Peter C. Bouteneff, François Bovon, William D. Bowman, Paul S. Boyer, David Brakke, Richard E. Brantley, Marcus Braybrooke, Ian Breward, Ênio José da Costa Brito, Jewel Spears Brooker, Johannes Brosseder, Nicholas Canfield Read Brown, Robert F. Brown, Pamela K. Brubaker, Walter Brueggemann, Bishop Colin O. Buchanan, Stanley M. Burgess, Amy Nelson Burnett, J. Patout Burns, David B. Burrell, David Buttrick, James P. Byrd, Lavinia Byrne, Gerado Caetano, Marcos Caldas, Alkiviadis Calivas, William J. Callahan, Salvatore Calomino, Euan K. Cameron, William S. Campbell, Marcelo Ayres Camurça, Daniel F. Caner, Paul E. Capetz, Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi, Patrick W. Carey, Barbara Carvill, Hal Cauthron, Subhadra Mitra Channa, Mark D. Chapman, James H. Charlesworth, Kenneth R. Chase, Chen Zemin, Luciano Chianeque, Philip Chia Phin Yin, Francisca H. Chimhanda, Daniel Chiquete, John T. Chirban, Soobin Choi, Robert Choquette, Mita Choudhury, Gerald Christianson, John Chryssavgis, Sejong Chun, Esther Chung-Kim, Charles M. A. Clark, Elizabeth A. Clark, Sathianathan Clarke, Fred Cloud, John B. Cobb, W. Owen Cole, John A Coleman, John J. Collins, Sylvia Collins-Mayo, Paul K. Conkin, Beth A. Conklin, Sean Connolly, Demetrios J. Constantelos, Michael A. Conway, Paula M. Cooey, Austin Cooper, Michael L. Cooper-White, Pamela Cooper-White, L. William Countryman, Sérgio Coutinho, Pamela Couture, Shannon Craigo-Snell, James L. Crenshaw, David Crowner, Humberto Horacio Cucchetti, Lawrence S. Cunningham, Elizabeth Mason Currier, Emmanuel Cutrone, Mary L. Daniel, David D. Daniels, Robert Darden, Rolf Darge, Isaiah Dau, Jeffry C. Davis, Jane Dawson, Valentin Dedji, John W. de Gruchy, Paul DeHart, Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards, Miguel A. De La Torre, George E. Demacopoulos, Thomas de Mayo, Leah DeVun, Beatriz de Vasconcellos Dias, Dennis C. Dickerson, John M. Dillon, Luis Miguel Donatello, Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev, Susanna Drake, Jonathan A. Draper, N. Dreher Martin, Otto Dreydoppel, Angelyn Dries, A. J. Droge, Francis X. D'Sa, Marilyn Dunn, Nicole Wilkinson Duran, Rifaat Ebied, Mark J. Edwards, William H. Edwards, Leonard H. Ehrlich, Nancy L. Eiesland, Martin Elbel, J. Harold Ellens, Stephen Ellingson, Marvin M. Ellison, Robert Ellsberg, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Eldon Jay Epp, Peter C. Erb, Tassilo Erhardt, Maria Erling, Noel Leo Erskine, Gillian R. Evans, Virginia Fabella, Michael A. Fahey, Edward Farley, Margaret A. Farley, Wendy Farley, Robert Fastiggi, Seena Fazel, Duncan S. Ferguson, Helwar Figueroa, Paul Corby Finney, Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, Thomas E. FitzGerald, John R. Fitzmier, Marie Therese Flanagan, Sabina Flanagan, Claude Flipo, Ronald B. 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Yee, Viktor Yelensky, Yeo Khiok-Khng, Gustav K. K. Yeung, Angela Yiu, Amos Yong, Yong Ting Jin, You Bin, Youhanna Nessim Youssef, Eliana Yunes, Robert Michael Zaller, Valarie H. Ziegler, Barbara Brown Zikmund, Joyce Ann Zimmerman, Aurora Zlotnik, Zhuo Xinping
- Edited by Daniel Patte, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
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- The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity
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- 05 August 2012
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- 20 September 2010, pp xi-xliv
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Justification by Gender — Daphne Hampson's After Christianity1
- Angela West
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- Scottish Journal of Theology / Volume 51 / Issue 1 / February 1998
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- 30 January 2009, pp. 99-115
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- February 1998
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The Politics of Innocence
- Angela West
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- New Blackfriars / Volume 78 / Issue 919 / September 1997
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- 28 February 2024, pp. 382-389
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- September 1997
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“It wasn't that I particularly supported their policies” a colleague said to me on the day after the election “but I just wanted to get rid of that other lot.” In many ways a natural conservative, she seemed to represent that vast change of mood among the electorate, for whom the Tory government had become the image of corruption, self-interest and hypocrisy, and for whom New Labour seemed to offer the hope of a re-birth of political innocence, a new national consensus about the common good. Coming from a different standpoint, it was a mood I could fervently share with her, and with so many friends who are still reliving the exhilaration of that historic night. Yet I am conscious of a paradox with regard to this great upsurge of new political hope. For the longing to avoid harm and be blameless is at the root of our highest spiritual and moral aspirations; but it is also a dangerous and corrosive passion. The lust for innocence can also be detected in the desires of the recently disgraced.
In the Guardian some months before the election Hugo Young analysed the particular form of corruption that had overtaken British politics—not so much systemic financial corruption, as a form of intellectual corruption. Ministers, defending their actions after the Scott Report or in the Neil Hamilton affair, had apparently come to believe that ‘the mere fact that words and actions are theirs, unfailingly performed for the best of all possible reasons, guarantees their rectitude’. They were scandalised that the public might actually believe that they had been privately milking the political system to protect or advance their political interests.
The Greenham Vigil: a women's theological initiative for peace
- Angela West
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- New Blackfriars / Volume 67 / Issue 789 / March 1986
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- 02 April 2024, pp. 125-137
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- March 1986
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On August 31st 1984, ten women arrived at Blue Gate, the entrance to the American Cruise missile base at Greenham Common to do the night watch for the peace camp there—and simultaneously to keep the vigil of the Passion based on the gospel of St. Mark. It so happened that that weekend was the anniversary of the women’s peace camp—three years since it had been set up in 1981. The camp had been evicted and destroyed many times. But the women return and remain, gathering around the fire, huddled under sheets of polythene at night and in the rain. Old prams stand at the ready for the women to wheel away their few possessions when the bailiffs come in the morning—as they do most days.
The women of the camp welcomed the night watchers and extended the hospitality of their fire, before going off to sleep under the polythene sheets. The vigil women remained around the fire to keep the watch, gathering each hour on the hour to face the guarded gates of Greenham, to sing a psalm, read from the bible and pray. Towards morning at 6.00 a.m., as dawn came up over the base, and Mark’s gospel told of Jesus being led away and delivered to Pilate, the night watch prepared to depart. Meanwhile, another woman was getting up in London and going to continue the vigil in the church beside her house.
Without the presence of the women’s peace camp at Greenham, this theological initiative for peace on the part of Christian women would not have taken place.
Bodiliness and the Good News — II
- Angela West
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- New Blackfriars / Volume 64 / Issue 756 / June 1983
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- 02 April 2024, pp. 261-269
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- June 1983
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In the first part of this article, I described how a small group of Christian feminists, concerned with issues of sexual justice and the role of women in the creation of a just society, found themselves involved in the establishment of a new eucharistic community, where women had the opportunity to preach the good news of our calling — as we were beginning to understand it. I looked at some of the resistance that we encountered in ourselves as we moved into this new sphere, and at the nature of the ideology, which at psychological level, preserves the sexual status quo, and hinders women from taking their full part in Christian ministry, and their full responsibility for proclaiming the Christian gospel. Here I hope to continue reflection on the experience of our community, and show how it has contributed to my understanding of the sacramental body of Christ and its true ministry.
At the time that our community was in the thick of its problems with the organisation of itself and the Mass, I happened to read Schillebeeckx’ essay on Ministry in the book Minister? Pastor? Prophet? and felt that it threw a great deal of light on the problems that we were undergoing. The questions he was asking about the role and nature of priesthood were importantly related to questions which were on our own practical and theological agenda. In taking the Mass into the context of the women’s community, it was rather as if we had removed the string from a set of rosary beads.
Bodiliness and the Good News — I
- Angela West
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- New Blackfriars / Volume 64 / Issue 755 / May 1983
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- 02 April 2024, pp. 204-214
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- May 1983
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This paper was originally written for the Glencar Summer School, the theme of which for that year was Liberation. The space for this contribution was entitled ‘Liberation in the Family’. As a Christian feminist, my own concern in the area of family is how women can serve in the family of God; this latter I take to be as different from The Family (of popular and sociological imagination) as the Kingdom of God is different from say, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In the two parts of this article, I hope to explore the experience of a group of women so as to demonstrate the meaning that is fully entailed by ‘Liberation in the Family’. That is, I believe, that it necessarily involves us in a reappraisal of our whole theological understanding of the Body and the Spirit.
Recently there have been several attempts to introduce Latin American liberation theology into this country. These attempts can usually be recognized by their chief catchphrase — ‘doing theology’. ‘Doing theology’ is represented as being a practical and political affair which everyone can take part in, and which is the opposite and alternative to academic theology, which is believed to be remote, abstract and oriented to the elite. But the problem with this approach to ‘doing theology’ is that it tends to leave us with another abstraction. What in Latin America was the result of a historical and political process, and the naming a new reality as a result of this process, becomes in translation to our historical reality simply a new abstraction.
A Theology For Britain In The 80s ?
- Angela West, Roger Ruston, O P
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- New Blackfriars / Volume 62 / Issue 737 / November 1981
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- 02 April 2024, pp. 455-464
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- November 1981
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Has Liberation Theology taken root in Britain? The Times (28 August) detected it as an alien influence when the Archbishop of Liverpool and other local churchmen supported the BCC grant of £500 to the Liverpool 8 Defence Committee. The complaint was that although it might be appropriate in its countries of origin, with their acute poverty, cruelty, exploitation and political corruption, in Britain it can do nothing but play into the hands of political extremists. But £500 won’t go very far towards a revolution these days. It will soon be eaten up in fares and lawyers’ fees. It is clearly the sign of the churches taking sides — that is, changing sides — in a political struggle, that the Times doesn’t like. Whatever we may think of the Liverpool events, the 80s is clearly going to be a dangerous decade. There have been warnings of deepening social division, more urban conflict and a police force changing its main concern from crime-prevention to national security. If this is the way things are going, there will certainly be serious attempts by British Christians to learn lessons from the Liberation Theologians and apply them on their own ground.
It was concerns of this kind that caused a group of politically- minded Christians to organise a conference entitled “A Theology for Britain in the 80s” at Easter time this year in Digby Stuart College, Roehampton and to get funds from — the BCC. The event had been planned for two years and the participants were personally invited months beforehand and asked to prepare themselves through discussions with their “base groups”. However, judging by the lateness of some invitations, the organisers had difficulty in attracting many of the people they had first asked to this theological banquet. Some of the guests, it seems, had pressing reasons of their own for not turning up; and the organisers had been obliged, to go out and compel others to come in and fill the empty places.
Genesis and Patriarchy: Part II Women and the End of Time
- Angela West
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- Journal:
- New Blackfriars / Volume 62 / Issue 736 / October 1981
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- 02 April 2024, pp. 420-432
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- October 1981
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In a previous article, (New Black friars Jan 1981) I argued that the eschatological interpretation of biblical theology is, ultimately, the only possible site for the creation of a feminist discourse. To put it in more assimilable terms: the contradiction of being a woman and a feminist is only finally resolvable in the context of Christian eschatology. This is rather a large claim, so I shall try to substantiate it.
Most theology hitherto has been based on an essentially androcentric perspective as a result of the fact that it is founded on an essentially androcentric anthropology. In recent years, attempts have been made by some anthropologists to bring an alternative perspective to bear on the material of their discipline: thus, Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, the editors of a recently published collection of essays by a number of female anthropologists state in their introduction that the aim of the book is to ‘demonstrate the importance of women’s lives for our understanding of the human record’. I think it is important to consider what implications their conclusions, and those of other feminist scholars, have for non-androcentric theology, for a feminist hermeneutics.
At first sight, their conclusions wouldn’t seem to be very comforting to feminists. ‘The current anthropological view draws on the observation that most and probably all contemporary societies, whatever their kinship organisation or mode of subsistence, are characterised by some degree of male dominance’. And further on they say ‘. . . although the degree and expression of female subordination vary greatly, sexual asymmetry is presently a universal fact of life’.
Genesis and Patriarchy
- Angela West
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- Journal:
- New Blackfriars / Volume 62 / Issue 727 / January 1981
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 02 April 2024, pp. 17-32
- Print publication:
- January 1981
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- Article
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The authors of Genesis, and other books in the Pentateuch, created their text by taking myths and stories that had arisen in various sections of their society at different stages of its development, and by means of a process of combination, re-arrangement and redaction, they re-wrote them to provide an interpretation suitable for their society in quite new historical circumstances. These circumstances were extreme — they were a people cut off from their homeland and their origins, exiles in the superior and sophisticated civilisation of imperial Babylon. In his account of the Creation and the Fall, the Yahwist historian (as scholars refer to this one of the two authorial narratives of Genesis) addresses himself to a people experiencing political subordination and alienation from the culture in which they are living. Hence, he takes up what would be an understandable preoccupation for them in such circumstances — a reflection on the origins of human culture.
Juliet Mitchell, in her book Psychoanalysis and Feminism embarks on a project that, in some sense, resembles that of the Yah-wist historian. ‘All questions relating to the position and role of women in society’ she says, ‘tend sooner or later to founder on the bedrock of “where did it all start”?’ This, too, is a question about the origin of human culture, and what it implies for the subordinate position that women find themselves in. By taking Freud’s psychoanalytical myth of the origins of patriarchal society, together with Engel’s historical materialist account of women’s subordination in the institutions of the family, private property and the state, she re-appropriates for feminism two of the most important critical traditions of our society