One Acre Fund, Kigali, Rwanda.
George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA.
Matern Child Nutr. 2024 Jan;20(1):e13573. doi: 10.1111/mcn.13573. Epub 2023 Oct 13.
Childhood malnutrition, which is endemic in rural areas of low-income countries, leads to a host of deleterious outcomes such as poor cognitive development, low educational attainment and lower lifetime wages. Promoting the consumption of eggs among young children has emerged as a promising strategy to combat childhood malnutrition, though pathways to scale remain unclear. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of a social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) campaign combined with a program in which rural families purchased chickens on credit (poultry + SBCC; n = 769) relative to an arm in which families only received the poultry intervention (poultry only; n = 750), using a difference-in-difference estimation strategy with propensity score matching. The SBCC consisted of radio messages, in-person training, text message reminders and posters. We found a relatively modest but statistically significant increase in the number of times per week respondents in the poultry + SBCC arm reported feeding eggs to children of 0.28 (p = 0.02) compared to the poultry-only arm. The increase in egg feeding, however, was more pronounced for boys (0.42, p < 0.01) than for girls (0.14, p = 0.26). In addition, the campaign increased egg feeding more for those who were already feeding eggs to children (0.63, p < 0.01) than those who were not engaging in those practices at baseline (0.26, p < 0.01). However, the difference in these differences was not statistically significant. Future campaigns should ensure higher saturation of messaging and include specific messaging around the importance of feeding girls as well as boys. Campaigns seeking to scale up egg feeding quickly could potentially target the easier-to-reach segment of caregivers who already occasionally feed eggs to children though these might not be the neediest group.
儿童期营养不良在低收入国家的农村地区普遍存在，会导致一系列不良后果，如认知能力发展不良、教育程度低和终身工资低。促进幼儿食用鸡蛋已成为一种有前途的对抗儿童期营养不良的策略，尽管扩大规模的途径仍不清楚。在本文中，我们评估了社会和行为变化传播（SBCC）运动与一项计划相结合的影响，该计划是让农村家庭赊账购买鸡（家禽+SBCC；n=769），而另一组家庭只接受家禽干预（仅家禽；n=750），采用倾向评分匹配的差分差异估计策略。SBCC 包括无线电信息、面对面培训、短信提醒和海报。我们发现，在报告每周给孩子喂食鸡蛋的次数方面，家禽+SBCC 组相对家禽组增加了 0.28（p=0.02），这一增长虽然适度，但具有统计学意义。然而，男孩（0.42，p<0.01）的鸡蛋喂养量增加比女孩（0.14，p=0.26）更明显。此外，对于那些已经在给孩子喂食鸡蛋的人（0.63，p<0.01），该运动增加了鸡蛋喂养量，而对于那些在基线时没有这些做法的人（0.26，p<0.01），增加量则较小。然而，这些差异之间的差异没有统计学意义。未来的运动应该确保信息传递的饱和度更高，并包括关于喂养男孩和女孩同等重要性的具体信息。那些希望迅速扩大鸡蛋喂养规模的运动可以针对那些已经偶尔给孩子喂食鸡蛋的更容易接触到的照顾者群体，尽管这些群体可能不是最需要的群体。
