Leveraging an Existing Large-scale Safe Water Program to Deliver Nutrition Messages at a Low Marginal Cost

NCT ID: NCT02427945

Last Updated: 2019-03-19

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 1671 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2015-05-31
• Study Completion Date: 2017-06-30

Brief Summary

The investigators are seeking to overcome the dual challenges of under-nutrition and diarrhea using an existing safe water supply platform to deliver nutrition information to targeted groups in Western Kenya. Using a randomized evaluation, investigators will determine the impact on nutrition status and practices of delivering nutrition information. The evaluation results will enable Evidence Action to make strategic decisions regarding the potential scale-up of the combined program across Kenya.

Detailed Description

Evidence Action's Dispensers for Safe Water program currently provides access to safe water for two million people. The program would be able to leverage the existence of this service delivery platform to provide promoters with training on proper nutrition and methods for delivering these messages to target groups.

The intervention is a home visiting program that will provide nutrition advice on complementary feeding to households with children aged 6-24 months. Two types of home visits will be evaluated, a 'traditional visit mode' in which the child's mother receives the visit; and a 'couples visit mode' in which the promoter attempts to involve both the father and mother.

Households in the control group will also receive home visits by promoters but the content of the visit will be restricted to safe water. The same information on safe water will also be provided to households in the treatment group. Hence, the evaluation will measure the additional effect of providing nutrition information on top of information on safe water.

Promoters will provide advice on nutrition and food hygiene to target households, according to criteria established by Evidence Action. Following the Guiding Principles for Complementary Feeding of the Breastfed Child (PAHO/WHO 2003), the intervention will include information on the maintenance of breastfeeding, safe/hygienic preparation and storage of complementary foods, amount of complementary food needed, food consistency, meal frequency and energy density, nutrient content of complementary foods, and feeding after illness. The home visits will be modelled on the MaiMwana Infant Feeding intervention (http://www.maimwana.malawi.net/MaiMwana/Home.html) that has been taking place in Mchinji (Malawi) since 2005.

Households within the treatment group will be provided by a poster to hang in their dwellings with some basic information on nutrition. A random subset of households will be given a small poster in black and white, and the other subset of households will be give a larger color poster.

Conditions

Child Malnutrition

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: PREVENTION
• Blinding Strategy: SINGLE

Study Groups

Control

Provision of information on safe water

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Provision of information on safe water

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

A promoter from Evidence Action will visit the household and provide information on safe water.

Treatment traditional

Provision of information on safe water and child nutrition. The information will be targeted to the mother of the child aged between 6 and 24 months old.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Provision of information on safe water and child nutrition

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

A promoter from Evidence Action will visit the household and provide information on safe water, as well as child nutrition (including hygiene on food preparation and storage). Households will be given a poster to hang in their dwellings with basic nutrition information. The poster might be smaller and in black and white, or larger and in color.

Treatment couple

Provision of information on safe water and child nutrition. The information will be targeted to the mother of the child aged between 6 and 24 months old, and her husband.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Provision of information on safe water and child nutrition

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

A promoter from Evidence Action will visit the household and provide information on safe water, as well as child nutrition (including hygiene on food preparation and storage). Households will be given a poster to hang in their dwellings with basic nutrition information. The poster might be smaller and in black and white, or larger and in color.

Interventions

Provision of information on safe water

A promoter from Evidence Action will visit the household and provide information on safe water.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Provision of information on safe water and child nutrition

A promoter from Evidence Action will visit the household and provide information on safe water, as well as child nutrition (including hygiene on food preparation and storage). Households will be given a poster to hang in their dwellings with basic nutrition information. The poster might be smaller and in black and white, or larger and in color.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Children will be included if they are between 0 and 18 months at baseline and live within the catchment area of a water point in which Evidence Action installs a chlorine dispenser

Exclusion Criteria

• None

• Maximum Eligible Age: 18 Months
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

Evidence Action

UNKNOWN

Sponsor Role: collaborator

MaiMwana

UNKNOWN

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Marcos Vera Hernandez

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Marcos Vera Hernandez

Research Fellow

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Marcos Vera-Hernandez, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Research Fellow

Locations

Evidence Action

Busia, Busia County, Kenya

Countries

Kenya

Other Identifiers

1827/006

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id