Engaging Fathers for Effective Child Nutrition and Development in Tanzania (EFFECTS)

Project Concern International

Status: Completed

Conditions: Child Nutrition and Early Child Development

Treatments: Behavioral: Nutrition, mothers and fathers; Behavioral: Nutrition+parenting, mothers; Behavioral: Nutrition+parenting, mothers and fathers; Behavioral: Nutrition, mothers

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03759821

01

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study aims to evaluate the independent and combined effectiveness of engaging both mothers and fathers in bundled parenting and nutrition behavior change packages on early child nutrition and development.

Full description

The overall aim of EFFECTS is to develop, implement, and evaluate nutrition and parenting interventions that will be delivered by community health workers in the Mara region of Tanzania. We will use a 2x2 factorial cluster randomized controlled study design, plus a local standard of care control group, to evaluate the effectiveness of EFFECTS on the primary outcomes of early child nutrition and development. In total, there will be five study arms: nutrition intervention with mothers, nutrition intervention with mothers and fathers, bundled nutrition and parenting intervention with mothers, bundled nutrition and parenting intervention with mothers and fathers, and a local standard of care control. We hypothesize that an intervention approach that engages fathers will benefit the primary outcomes; a bundled nutrition and parenting package will benefit the same primary outcomes; and that the combined intervention approach - that both engages fathers and bundles nutrition and parenting messages - will have additive benefits on the primary outcomes.

Enrollment: 960 patients

Sex: All

Ages: Under 18 months old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Household has a child aged 0-18 months at study enrollment
• Child has a mother/female caregiver with a male partner
• Mother, father, and child anticipate remaining in the study area for the duration of the study
• The mother, and father where appropriate, is willing to participate in a peer group for the duration of the intervention, receiving full knowledge of the amount of time they are expected to contribute to this study.
• Both mother and father provide informed consent.
• Fathers have to be present in household with mother/child 10 months out of the year

Exclusion criteria

• None (only those households not meeting all the above criteria will be excluded from the study)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Factorial Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

---

960 participants in 5 patient groups

Nutrition, mothers

Experimental group

Description:

Community health workers (CHWs) will facilitate peer group sessions with mothers of children aged 0-18 months at enrollment. The CHWs will deliver key messages and facilitate problem-solving and skill-building activities to promote nutrition-related behavior change. Group sessions will last between 1.5-2 hours and groups will meet biweekly for a period of 12 months. Due to the COVID pandemic, group sessions were paused for three months (March-June 2020). The intervention resumed in July 2020 with delivery via home visits rather than peer groups, and concluded in September 2020.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Nutrition, mothers

Nutrition, mothers and fathers

Experimental group

Description:

Community health workers (CHWs) will facilitate peer group sessions with mothers and fathers of children aged 0-18 months at enrollment. The CHWs will deliver key messages and facilitate problem-solving and skill-building activities to promote nutrition-related behavior change. Group sessions will last between 1.5-2 hours and the groups will meet biweekly for a period of 12 months. Due to the COVID pandemic, group sessions were paused for three months (March-June 2020). The intervention resumed in July 2020 with delivery via home visits rather than peer groups, and concluded in September 2020.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Nutrition, mothers and fathers

Nutrition+parenting, mothers

Experimental group

Description:

Community health workers (CHWs) will facilitate peer group sessions with mothers of children aged 0-18 months at enrollment. CHWs will deliver key messages and facilitate problem-solving and skill-building activities to promote nutrition and parenting-related behavior change. The group sessions will last between 1.5-2 hours and groups will meet biweekly for a period of 12 months. Due to the COVID pandemic, group sessions were paused for three months (March-June 2020). The intervention resumed in July 2020 with delivery via home visits rather than peer groups, and concluded in September 2020.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Nutrition+parenting, mothers

Nutrition+parenting, mothers and fathers

Experimental group

Description:

Community health workers (CHWs) will facilitate peer group sessions with mothers and fathers of children aged 0-18 months at enrollment. CHWs will deliver key messages and facilitate problem-solving and skill-building activities to promote nutrition and parenting-related behavior change. The group sessions will last between 1.5-2 hours and groups will meet biweekly for a period of 12 months. Due to the COVID pandemic, group sessions were paused for three months (March-June 2020). The intervention resumed in July 2020 with delivery via home visits rather than peer groups, and concluded in September 2020.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Nutrition+parenting, mothers and fathers

Standard of care control

No Intervention group

Description:

Local standard of care