What Promotes Healthy Eating? The Roles of Information,Affordability,Accessibility,Gender, and Peers on Food Consumption

Summary

Pre-school undernutrition is a global problem with life long adverse consequences. One form of undernutrition, chronic undernutrition or stunting, affects 171 million children under the age of 5 worldwide. 35% of these children live in Africa. In Ethiopia, the focus of this study, in 2014, 44.5% of children under 5 were stunted. Stunting is the consequence of several factors including low birth weights, sub-optimal infant and complementary feeding practices and repeated illness. In Ethiopia, complementary feeding is sub-optimal; only 4% of children aged 6-24 months met the minimum dietary diversity recommended by WHO.

The investigators hypothesize four main reasons why many children and mothers in Ethiopia fall short of best practice in terms of meeting nutritional needs and providing appropriate childcare.

(i) Lack of information on healthy eating and appropriate child-feeding practices; (ii) Limited affordability; (iii) Limited accessibility to markets and diverse food items; and (iv) Limited peer effects in spreading information and adopting new practices.

This study will assess the efficacy of the interventions that address these four barriers to optimal complementary feeding practices in Ethiopia. Using a cluster randomized control design, mother-father-child pairs in two localities, Holeta and Ejere will be enrolled. Treatment will be randomized at the garee (village) level. There will be five treatment arms and a control group: T1, weekly maternal nutrition BCC sessions for four months; T2, weekly maternal nutrition BCC sessions for four months and weekly paternal nutrition BCC sessions for three months; T3, receipt of a food voucher for six months; T4, weekly maternal nutrition BCC sessions for four months and receipt of a food voucher for six months; T5 weekly maternal nutrition BCC sessions for four months and weekly paternal nutrition BCC sessions for three months and receipt of a food voucher for six months; and C, a control group. Within household, recipient of voucher (mother or father) will be randomly selected.

Conditions

• Malnutrition
• Stunted Growth
• Growth
• Feeding, Complementary

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Behavior change communication

Weekly behavior change communication (BCC) to mothers for the duration of 16 weeks Weekly behavior change communication (BCC) to fathers for the duration of 12 weeks

OTHER

Food Voucher (Monetary)

Monthly voucher worth 200 birr(\~$10) every month for the duration of 6 month

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Africa Future Foundation

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Cornell University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Hyuncheol Kim · Cornell University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

FACTORIAL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2017-06-25

Primary Completion

2018-03-31

Completion

2018-06-30

Countries

• Ethiopia