Functional difficulty among children and adolescents aged 5-17 years in Ethiopia: Multilevel analysis of the nationally representative 2024-2025 DHS

Background: Population-based data on functional difficulty among school-age children in Ethiopia are scarce. The 2024-2025 Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS) included, for the first time, the UNICEF/Washington Group Child Functioning Module (CFM) for children aged 5-17 years. We estimated the prevalence and domain distribution of functional difficulty and associated factors in Ethiopia. Methods: We analysed cross-sectional EDHS data from 11,122 children aged 5-17 years (weighted n = 10,726) and 4,739 mothers. Functional difficulty was defined as "a lot of difficulty" or "cannot do a

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