2026 Volume 36 Issue 2 Pages 214-223
Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are large-scale household surveys conducted in low-and middle-income countries, providing open-access, individual-level data on a wide range of health indicators, including maternal and child health and nutrition. However, their recognition remains limited outside the field of public health. In this study, we used the Tanzania DHS (2022) to estimate the prevalence of stunting, underweight, and overweight among children under five years of age at the regional level. Furthermore, we constructed a composite index integrating undernutrition and overnutrition, and visualized the spatial distribution of the double burden of malnutrition (DBM) using a geographic information system (GIS). The results revealed substantial regional disparities in DBM, with particularly high co-occurrence of undernutrition and overnutrition observed in regions such as Njombe. With the global promotion of open data and the increasing availability of open-source software such as QGIS, this study illustrates how public health analyses and policy recommendations addressing regional issues in different countries can be made more widely accessible to the public.
