children aged 6–23 months, maternal socio-economic, multi-level analysis, animal source food consumption, East Africa, Nutrition. Foods and food supply, TX341-641

BackgroundNutrient deficiencies in Africa persist due to limited access to animal-source foods, causing a higher undernutrition prevalence, with 30.7% stunted children under five, which is higher than the global average of 22.0%. In African regions, there needs to be more information on access, consumption, and factors influencing children’s animal-source food consumption. Therefore, we comprehensively analyse data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to determine factors associated with children’s (aged 6–23 months) consumption of animal-source foods (ASFs) in East African countries, which is crucial for policy and program development.MethodsWe utilized cross-sectional pooled DHS data from nine East African countries reported from 2015 to 2021. The sample size consisted of 18,686 weighted children aged 6–23 months who were included. The DHS data were collected from women (15–49 years old) from households in each enumeration area of each country. We calculated the pooled proportion of consumption of foods of animal origin using multi-level logistic regression analysis to determine factors of ASFs, and the strength of the association was measured by an adjusted odds ratio (AOR) with a 95% CI and a p-value