Sharing Histories: Test of a Teaching Method for Community Health Workers

Future Generations Graduate School

Status: Completed

Conditions: Health Behavior; Infant Nutrition Disorders

Treatments: Behavioral: Standard training method for CHW; Behavioral: Sharing Histories training method for CHW

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Other U.S. Federal agency

Identifiers

NCT02903602

N° AID-OAA-A-10-00048 (Other Grant/Funding Number)

FGGS-01

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of an innovative methodology for training Community Health Workers that will improve their effectiveness in educating mothers to adopt best practice health behaviors in the home.

Full description

Objective: Training of community health workers (CHW) is a growing priority to close the gap between health services and mothers/families in resource poor communities. To address research needs on how to improve effectiveness of CHW training, the investigators tested an innovative CHW teaching methodology called "Sharing Histories" hypothesizing that this would empower and enable CHW to better teach mothers to improve health knowledge and behaviors that contribute to improved child growth.

Method: The study was a cluster-randomized controlled trial: 22 health facility jurisdictions were matched and randomly assigned as experimental or control. Health personnel Tutors and female CHW were trained using either the "Sharing Histories" methodology (experimental) or a standard but still participatory teaching method (control). Training content, materials, and other interventions were held constant between study groups. Impact on maternal knowledge and practices, and child growth and morbidity were measured in representative household surveys at baseline, midterm, and final evaluation, with 600 mothers interviewed - 300 in each study group - at each point in time.

Enrollment: 600 patients

Sex: All

Ages: Under 23 months old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Adult interviewed must be mother or guardian of a child under two years of age.
• Child from birth (0.1 months-old) to under two years of age (23.9 months-old).

Exclusion criteria

• If a mother selected for interview had more than one child under age two years, only the younger child was considered for the interview and anthropometry measurements.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Triple Blind

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600 participants in 2 patient groups

CHW training method-Sharing Histories

Experimental group

Description:

Experimental clusters of primary health care facilities provided training to Community Health Workers (CHW) from their communities utilizing the experimental teaching methodology, "Sharing Histories". CHW in both study groups made home visits to pregnant women and mothers of children under two years of age to teach mothers, monitor behaviors and danger signs in pregnant women, newborns, and children, and refer cases when needed for preventive and curative care.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Sharing Histories training method for CHW

CHW training method-Standard

Active Comparator group

Description:

Control clusters of primary health care facilities provided training to Community Health Workers (CHW) from their communities utilizing a standard CHW teaching methodology. CHW in both study groups made home visits to pregnant women and mothers of children under two years of age to teach mothers, monitor behaviors and danger signs in pregnant women, newborns, and children, and refer cases when needed for preventive and curative care.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Standard training method for CHW