Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Aug 1, 2020
Open Peer Review Period: Aug 1, 2020 - Sep 26, 2020
Date Accepted: Sep 13, 2020
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Protocol: Impact of Nutrition Education on Nutrition Capacity of Caregivers and Nutrition Outcomes of Indigenous Mbororo Children in the West Region of Cameroon: Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
Inadequate diets and life-threatening infections have profound adverse implications for child growth, development and survival, particularly among marginalized populations. Evidence of the effectiveness of community-based nutrition education interventions in improving child feeding and nutrition outcomes among Indigenous Mbororo population in Cameroon is scare.
Objective:
This study aims at investigating the impact of culturally-tailored community-based nutrition education intervention (Nu-WASHE) on caregivers’ knowledge attitude and practice (KAP) regarding complementary feeding and nutrition outcomes of Indigenous Mbororo children (3-59 months) in the Foumban and Galim health districts of the West region of Cameroon.
Methods:
A two-arm cluster randomized controlled trial will be conducted in the Foumban health district (FHD) and Galim health district (GHD). The intervention and control arms will each comprise of 5 clusters with 121 child-caregiver pairs. The intervention will consist of twelve 90 to 120 minutes facilitated group sessions, using 5 caregivers’ peer-support platforms. Six trained female Mbororo nutrition volunteers resident in the communities and 6 community health workers will lead the intervention under supervision. The control arm will receive routine facility-based nutrition education. Data will be collected at 3 months and 6 months follow-up. Both descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic models will be used to estimate the effect of Nu-WASHE (independent variable) on outcome variables (complementary feeding KAP, child’s weight, height/length, and morbidity status) within and between both arms. Clustering effect will be considered in the analysis. An approval (ref: 2019/1002-07/UB/SG/IRB/FHS) was obtained from the Faculty of Health Sciences-Institutional Review Board of the University of Buea.
Results:
From the pre-intervention study undertaken in September 2019, baseline data was collected and partially analyzed to inform the design of this proposed experimental study. In February 2020, 10 Mbororo communities (clusters) with 242 child-caregiver pairs were selected for the trial. Six community nutrition volunteers (CNV) and 6 community health workers (CHW) were selected and trained. Due to the COVID-19 preventive measures, implementation of the trial could not effectively start in March 2020 as scheduled.
Conclusions:
The findings of this study will provide evidence on the impact of culturally-tailored and Health belief Model-based nutrition education for behavior change as a complementary strategy for strengthening health facility-based approaches to the burden of malnutrition among the study population. Clinical Trial: The protocol was submitted to the WHO Pan Africa Clinical Trial Registry in South Africa for review. Feedback is still being awaited. The last correspondence was on July 4, 2020
Citation
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Copyright
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