Engaging Fathers For Effective Child Nutrition (EFFECT) and Nurturing Care (EFFECT+) in Tanzania (EFFECTS)
Globally, 250 million children are failing to meet their developmental potential in the first five years of life with detrimental consequences to their future health, learning, behavior, and economic productivity (TDHS, 2015). In the Mara region of Tanzania, undernutrition and inadequate stimulation are significant risk factors for poor early development outcomes. Thirty-four percent of children 0-59 months of age are stunted and one in six children 24-35 months of age are severely stunted. In Tanzania, more than one in three children 0-59 months of age are stunted, with 9 regions having a prevalence classified as extremely high (>40%) (UNICEF, 2017). This high prevalence of stunting reflects chronic nutritional deprivation, which can result from factors such as poverty, inadequate infant and young child feeding practices (IYCF), limited access to a diverse diet, maternal malnutrition, low women’s education and empowerment, reoccurring bouts of illness, and poor hygiene practices, all of which are observed to have a high prevalence in Tanzania. Moreover, there are significant gaps in availability of integrated community-based early childhood development (ECD) programs that target the child-caregiver relationship and the caregiving environment among the most vulnerable children 0-3 years and their caregivers.
AAPH together with Project Concern International (PCI), Perdue University and Harvard University are implementing the EFFECTS Trial. The EFFECTS project is an ongoing social and behavior change (SBC) implementation research study assessing the impact of and promising approaches for engaging fathers in peer group-based nutrition intervention, and integrated nutrition and parenting intervention. The EFFECTS trial involves EFFECT and EFFECT+. The overall goal of Engaging Fathers For Effective Child Nutrition in Tanzania (EFFECT) is to reduce stunting among children under 2 (CU2). EFFECT will impact families with children ages 0-18 months, the period of greatest increase in levels of chronic malnutrition and during which nutritional deficits can have long-term consequences. Under Engaging Fathers For Effective Child Nutrition and Nurturing Care in Tanzania (EFFECT+), The Design and Evaluation of an Integrated Evidence-Based Nurturing Care Strategy for Families with Young Children in the First Three Years of Life in Northern Tanzania, PCI in collaboration with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Purdue University will leverage EFFECT funding from the Eleanor J. Crook Foundation to test whether an integrated nutrition and nurturing care intervention (with and without male engagement) is more effective for improving caregiving behaviors and child outcomes than a nutrition package alone (with and without male engagement).
AAPH is the local evaluation team in Tanzania supporting Harvard and Purdue Universities in data collection systems preparation, field survey and preliminary data cleaning. Overall, this will be a five-arm study design for EFFECT (3 arms) and EFFECT+ (2 arms). The trial is being implemented in the Mara region – Tanzania, with PCI as the lead implementing partner.