Introduction Anemia remains a significant public health problem among women and children in Ghana. Dietary intake is a significant predictor of anemia risk, yet the role of Ghanaian diets in the prevailing endemic anemia is little known. This study examined anemia prevalence and the association between Ghanaian mother–child dyads’ dietary patterns and anemia status. Methods The study utilized data from the 2022 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, a nationally representative cross‐sectional survey. We analyzed data from 3744 mother–child dyads with complete dietary and hemoglobin measurements. Dietary patterns were derived using principal component analysis from reported food group consumption and categorized into tertiles. Anemia was defined using World Health Organization cut‐offs. Poisson regression with robust variance estimation was used to estimate crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (aPRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs), adjusting for maternal education, household wealth, household head’s sex, interview month, number of children under 5 years, marital status, region, and residence. Results Anemia prevalence was 67.4% in children and 41.6% in mothers. Compared with the northern belt, children in the southern (aPR = 0.82; 95% CI: 0.69–0.98; p = 0.027) and middle belts (aPR = 0.68; 95% CI: 0.56–0.84; p = 0.0002) were less likely to be anemic; urban residence was protective (aPR = 0.95; 95% CI: 0.91–0.99; p = 0.040). Risks were higher for children from poorer households and those of younger mothers, while maternal education showed an inverse association with anemia. Anemia was more common among children whose mothers had anemia ( p < 0.001). Dietary patterns showed weak associations, limited to maternal westernized dietary pattern (PR = 0.97; 95% CI: 0.93–0.99; p = 0.047). Conclusion Anemia among Ghanaian mother–child dyads is primarily driven by structural, geographic, and intergenerational factors, with dietary patterns contributing minimally. Tackling socioeconomic inequities, enhancing malaria and infection control, and implementing family‐centered, regionally tailored strategies are essential to reducing Ghana’s anemia burden.
Kubuga et al. (Thu,) studied this question.