Intersectionality, Gender, and Non-Communicable Disease Risk in North Central Nigerian Women: A Feminist Epidemiological Analysis

Non-communicable disease risk among women in North Central Nigeria is patterned by intersecting social categories including gender, ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic position, yet mainstream epidemiological research frequently employs additive analytical models that fail to capture the complex interactive effects of these intersecting axes of disadvantage. This study applies Feminist Epidemiology and Intersectionality Theory to analyse non-communicable disease risk in women aged 30 to 65 years in Benue, Kogi, and Kwara States. A cross-sectional multi-state study design is applied to a sample of 1,800 women, capturing biological risk indicators (blood pressure, fasting glucose, BMI, total cholesterol), alongside measures of gender-based power dynamics in household decision-making, ethnoreligious minority status, poverty depth, labour precarity, domestic violence exposure, and health system discrimination experiences. Intersectional analyses are conducted using multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy in Stata and R, supplementing traditional categorical analysis with continuous heterogeneity measures to examine the degree of variance in risk attributable to intersecting disadvantage. Binary and multinomial logistic regression with interaction terms model the multiplicative effects of intersecting social positions. The original theoretical contribution of the study is the development of a Contextualised Intersectional Risk Model specific to Nigerian women's health, challenging assumptions of homogeneity in existing sub-Saharan African non-communicable disease research. Findings will provide a gendered, socially disaggregated evidence base for non-communicable disease prevention policy. Keywords: intersectionality, gender, non-communicable disease, feminist epidemiology, North Central Nigeria.