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I Get Height With A Little Help From My Friends: Herd Protection From Sanitation On Child Growth In Rural Ecuador [Post-Print], James Fuller, Eduardo Villamor, William Cevallos, James A. Trostle, Joseph Eisenberg

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Infectious disease interventions, such as vaccines and bed nets, have the potential to provide herd protection to non-recipients. Similarly, improved sanitation in one household may provide community-wide benefits if it reduces contamination in the shared environment. Sanitation at the household level is an important predictor of child growth, but less is known about the effect of sanitation coverage in the community.

Methods: From 2008 to 2013, we took repeated anthropometric measurements on 1314 children under 5 years of age in 24 rural Ecuadorian villages. Using mixed effects regression, we estimated the association between sanitation coverage in surrounding households and …