The Impact of Being Born with Cleft and Cleft Reparative Surgery on Overall Health and Speech Outcomes

Orofacial cleft is one of the most common and treatable birth defects in the world. If left untreated, orofacial cleft can impair normal speech development, and could lead to a number of health consequences later in life. The main motivation of the study is to measure the impact of being born with cleft and the cleft reparative surgery on overall speech and health for teenagers in India using difference-in-differences approach along with household fixed effects method. Overall health outcome was measured using height, weight, grip strength and BMI, and the speech outcome was measured using “Universal Parameters of Speech Evaluation”. Anderson Indices were used to pool health and speech parameters into one to measure overall health and speech outcomes. At the current sample size, the result suggests that there is no significant impact of being born with cleft and receiving cleft reparative surgery on overall health outcome. The speech outcome is negatively affected with cleft severity but the cleft surgery does not have a significant impact on overall speech outcome.