The Effect of Integrated Prevention and Treatment on Child Malnutrition and Health in Burkina Faso: a Cluster Randomized Intervention Study

Summary

Globally, child undernutrition is the underlying cause for 3.1 million deaths of children younger than 5 years. 18.7 million children under five years of age suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and an additional 33 million children suffer from moderate acute malnutrition, and are at risk of developing SAM

In Sub-Saharan Africa, there is often poor integration between programs to treat child acute malnutrition and programs that focus on the prevention of acute and chronic undernutrition - resulting in many missed opportunities for using prevention platforms to screen and refer SAM children, or for using screening and referral platforms to provide prevention services.

This project will address two critical gaps related to the integration of preventive and treatment programs: 1) screening and treatment of MAM/SAM have not yet been systematically integrated into routine health-center visits or mainstreamed into community outreach programs; and 2) screening programs often do not offer any preventive services for those children found not to be suffering from MAM/SAM at the time of screening; mothers of children identified as non-MAM/SAM case are usually sent home without receiving any health or nutrition inputs and as a result, may fail to come back for screening because they do not see any tangible benefit associated with their participation in the screening. This project will specifically address these gaps by assessing the effect of an integrated approach consisting of higher screening coverage and preventive Behavior Change Communication (BCC) + Small-Quantity Lipid-based Nutrient supplementation (SQ-LNS) on both prevention and treatment of child undernutrition.

Conditions

• Child Acute Malnutrition

Interventions

DIETARY_SUPPLEMENT

LNS

A monthly dose of LNS (31 sachets of 20g) will be distributed to mothers attending well-baby visits and participating in small group counseling

BEHAVIORAL

Child's health and nutrition topics

After the well-baby visit. Caregivers will be invited to participate in a small group counseling or BCC (2-3 caregivers at a time). Every month a set of topics related to child's health and nutrition will be treated. These BCC sessions will be organized in an interactive way centering around the condition of the participating children.

BEHAVIORAL

National policy well-baby visits

Sponsors & Collaborators

• International Food Policy Research Institute

  lead OTHER

• Helen Keller International

  collaborator OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Marie Ruel, PhD · International Food Policy Research Institute

• Jean-Celestin Somda, MD · Helen Keller International

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Max Age

17 Months

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-10-06

Primary Completion

2017-03-31

Completion

2017-05-01

Countries

• Burkina Faso

Study Locations