Abstract

This study investigates the linkages between household food security and the nutritional status of mothers and children under five years of age in Tanzania, recognising that malnutrition often affects mother–child pairs simultaneously within the same household. Using nationally representative data from the Tanzania Demographic and Health Surveys (TDHS-MIS) 2015/16 and 2022, the study applies model-based and geostatistical approaches to jointly assess nutritional outcomes and identify high-risk spatial clusters of mothers-child malnutrition. Nutritional status will be categorised into normal, undernourished, overweight, and double-burden pairs, and analysed in relation to individual, household, and community-level factors, with particular emphasis on household food security. Primary data will further be collected from clusters with the highest malnutrition prevalence to examine current food security conditions and nutrition-related knowledge, attitudes, and feeding practices. The study aims to generate comprehensive and spatially explicit evidence to inform targeted nutrition interventions, food security programmes, and social protection policies aimed at reducing all forms of malnutrition among mothers and young children in Tanzania.