Nutrition Education Package for Infants and Young Child Feeding and Health in Rural Tanzania

Summary

Building on the success of community-based peer education and counselling in breastfeeding, it is possible to address young child feeding and health practices in the surveyed district. Opportunities that can optimise success and encourage behaviour change in the district include mothers willingness to modify some feeding options; support of family members; seasonal availability and accessibility of foods; established set-up of village peers and existence of health centres and health staff in some villages. This study has developed a feasible, context-specific nutrition education package for use in rural Tanzania. The package is composed of 4 components, namely 1) education and counselling of mothers, 2) training of community-based nutrition counsellors, 3) sensitisation meetings with health staff and family members, and 4) supervision of community-based nutrition counsellors. The intervention will use a parallel cluster-randomised controlled trial design where infants will be recruited when aged 6 months and followed up for 9 months. The intervention expects to provide information and, where appropriate, recommendations to strengthen the nutrition component in the health education programme of the Tanzania child health services.

The study hypothesises that the nutrition education package will be more effective than the routine health education in improving feeding practices, dietary adequacy and growth of infants and young children. Specific objectives of the study include:

* To evaluate the effectiveness of a nutrition education package on feeding practices and dietary adequacy
* To determine the effectiveness of a nutrition education package in improving growth and health of infants and young children
* To document the process of implementation of the nutrition education package to promote optimal feeding and health practice

Conditions

• Growth Retardation
• Malnutrition

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Nutrition education

This group will receive the nutrition education package. The package is composed of: 1) education and counselling of mothers when the child is aged 6 (baseline), 9 and 12 months; 2) training community-based nutrition counsellors at baseline and 12 months and monthly home visits, 3) supervision of community-based nutrition counsellors' work every 2 months, and 4) sensitisation meetings with family members and health staff responsible for child health at baseline and repeated at 12 months. In addition, the group will continue to attend routine health education given at health facilities every month.

BEHAVIORAL

Routine health education

This group will receive routine health education every month. It is a standard government health service offered monthly in all health facilities by health staff. It is given to mothers of children below the age of five years during growth monitoring and immunisation contacts. The sessions take 10-15 minutes focusing on general health issues including child feeding, prevention of diseases such as malaria and importance of immunisations.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University Ghent

  collaborator OTHER

• Institute of Tropical Medicine, Belgium

  collaborator OTHER

• Schlumberger Foundation - Faculty for the Future Programme

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Nutrition Third World, Belgium

  collaborator OTHER

• Nestlé Foundation

  collaborator OTHER

• Sokoine University of Agriculture

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Prof. Patrick W. Kolsteren, PhD · Institute of Tropical Medicine (Belgium) and Ghent University (Belgium)

• Kissa BM Kulwa, MSc. · Sokoine University of Agriculture and Ghent University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

6 Months

Max Age

7 Months

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-09-30

Primary Completion

2015-08-31

Completion

2015-08-31

Countries

• Tanzania

Study Locations