Table 1.
Evaluation metrics for the prediction of severe stunting in Eastern African countries, 2012–2022.
Table 2.
Child-related/maternity-related characteristics for predicting severe stunting and its determinants among under-five children in Eastern African Countries, 2012–2022 (n = 76019).
Table 3.
Maternal/household related characteristics for predicting severe stunting and its determinants among under-five children in Eastern African Countries, 2012–2022 (n = 76019).
Fig 1.
Forest plot showing the prevalence of severe stunting among under-five children in Eastern African countries using data from DHS 2012–2022.
Fig 2.
Distribution of severe stunting before and after data balancing for the prediction of severe stunting Eastern African countries, using data from DHS 2012–2022.
Table 4.
Model building and performance evaluation using accuracy and AUC scores of balanced and unbalanced training data across different ML models for predictions of severe stunting among children under five, in Eastern African countries from 2012–2022.
Table 5.
Default and optimum hyperparameter values for the RF model for predictions of severe stunting among under five, in Eastern African countries, 2012–2022.
Table 6.
Two-by-two table of optimized RF model for predictions of severe stunting among children under five, in Eastern African countries, 2012–2022.
Fig 3.
SHAP global importance plot for the predictions of severe stunting among children under five in Eastern African countries, 2012–2022.
(Hint: exclusive breastfeeding_0 = who do not practicing exclusive breastfeeding, being from country_1 = Burundi, underweight status_0 = children being underweight, wealth index_0 = poor household, child sex_0 = male, mothers height _1, mothers BMI_0 = underweight, child size at birth _0 = small, place of delivery_0 = home delivery, mothers education_0 = primary, toilet type_0 = unimproved, distance to health facility_0 = big problem.).
Fig 4.
Beeswarm plot for optimized RF model for the predictions of severe stunting among under five, in Eastern African countries 2012–2022.
(Hint: exclusive breastfeeding_0 = who do not practicing exclusive breastfeeding, being from country_1 = Burundi, underweight status_0 = children being underweight, wealth index_0 = poor household, child sex_0 = male, mothers height _1, mothers BMI_0 = underweight, child size at birth _0 = small, place of delivery_0 = home delivery, mothers education_0 = primary, toilet type_0 = unimproved, distance to health facility_0 = big problem.).