Integrating early child development into an existing health and nutrition program: evidence from a cluster-randomized controlled trial.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

In low-resource settings, introducing child health programs into community services may compete for caregiver time. We analyzed the impact of a new early childhood development (ECD) program in rural Madagascar on family attendance at other health services and of adding at-home play materials on program attendance.

Methods

We randomized 75 communities where community health workers (CHWs) implement an existing child health and nutrition program (Projet d'Amélioration des Résultats Nutritionnels or PARN), the status quo. We offered two 6-month cycles of 12 ECD sessions to eligible caregiver-child dyads (6-30 months) in 25 sites [T]; we added take-home play materials in Cycle 2 to 25 sites [T+]. We used differences-in-differences with administrative data to analyze

SUBMITTER: Hemlock C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11428953 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature