School-based Health Programs on Children's Wellbeing in Lusaka, Zambia

President and Fellows of Harvard College

Status: Completed

Conditions: Acute Disease; Morbidity

Treatments: Behavioral: School Health Worker Program

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03607084

IRB15-1539

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study evaluates the impact of a new and comprehensive school-based health program implemented in Lusaka, Zambia.

Full description

While school-aged children in low- and middle-income countries remain highly exposed to acute infections, programs targeting this age group remain limited in scale and scope. In this study, we evaluate the impact of a new and comprehensive primary school-based health intervention program on student health outcomes and academic performance in Lusaka, Zambia. The intervention involved the training of teachers to become school health workers and the provision of vitamin A supplementation and deworming medication on a bi-annual basis. Teachers in intervention schools were trained to deliver health lessons and to refer sick students to care. This study is designed as a prospective matched control study. Students from the seven intervention schools are matched with students from control schools.

Enrollment: 614 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Children attending one of the 14 schools in the study.

Exclusion criteria

• Children not attending one of the 14 schools in the study.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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614 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

The intervention group receives a school health program that has two components: the training of selected teachers to become school Health Workers and bi-annual health screenings of all students.

Treatment:

Behavioral: School Health Worker Program

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

The control group receives regular school programming.