Biodiversity in the Diet in Vietnam

University Ghent

Status: Completed

Conditions: Nutritional Status; Biodiversity; Food Intake

Treatments: Behavioral: Promotion of a biodiverse diet

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05144919

2015/1205

Details and patient eligibility

About

Agricultural biodiversity can have an important role in improving diet diversity, quality and nutrition and can be seen as the foundation of the food and nutrition value chain. Increasing the availability and access to local agricultural and/or wild biodiversity genetic resources has the potential to increase production, making more food available for consumption as long as entitlements to access it exist. However, as the history of food security interventions has shown, increasing the production and supply of staple crops alone is not enough to improve food security or nutritional status. However, while agricultural diversification is an important component, it is not alone sufficient to improve diet diversity. Other system elements including women's education and knowledge, intra-household dynamics and women's status and cultural beliefs and practices that improves children's health and nutrition are important to ensure biodiversity has a successful role in improving dietary diversity and quality.

Enrollment: 400 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 6 to 23 months old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• villages: Characterized as Thai village. Only Thai villages will be selected for the study as agriculture practices, diets, food preferences, language and cultures can change drastically between ethnic groups.
• participants: i) Woman of reproductive age (between 15-49 years) who are the mother or primary caregiver of a child between 12 and 23 months of age. This age group is part of the critical 1000 day window for child development and marks the time when young children can potentially consume all foods from the household pot and consume a more diverse diet. As such, it is from this age group that biodiversity can have an effect on children's diets.

ii) Both the woman and the child should be permanent residents in the village selected and do not temporarily migrate outside the village cluster during the year.

Exclusion criteria

• villages: Urban center of commune/province as these villages/cities do not have agriculture or home garden opportunities
• participants: currently engaged in other agriculture or nutrition programme or intervention apart from what is offered by government extension workers

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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400 participants in 2 patient groups

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

The control group will continue to receive routine health check and nutrition education from health staff at commune health facilities. Access to agriculture extension services as offered by provincial staff will also continue as normal.

Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

The intervention group will receive capacity building sessions on both Agriculture and Nutrition, in addition to access to routine health and nutrition checks, and agriculture extension as offered by commune and provincial staff as normal.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Promotion of a biodiverse diet