The Effect of Integrated Prevention and Treatment on Child Malnutrition and Health in Mali: a Cluster Randomized Intervention Study (PROMIS-Mali)

The Effect of Integrated Prevention and Treatment on Child Malnutrition and Health in Mali: a Cluster Randomized Intervention Study

The Effect of Integrated Prevention and Treatment on Child Malnutrition and Health in Mali: a Cluster Randomized Intervention Study

Globally, child undernutrition is the underlying cause for 3.1 million deaths of children younger than 5 years. 18.7 million children under five years of age suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and an additional 33 million children suffer from moderate acute malnutrition, and are at risk of developing SAM In Sub-Saharan Africa, there is often poor integration between programs to treat child acute malnutrition and programs that focus on the prevention of acute and chronic undernutrition - resulting in many missed opportunities for using prevention platforms to screen and refer SAM children, or for using screening and referral platforms to provide prevention services. This project will address two critical gaps related to the integration of preventive and treatment programs: 1) screening and treatment of MAM/SAM have not yet been systematically integrated into routine health-center visits or mainstreamed into community outreach programs; and 2) screening programs do not offer any preventive services for those children found not to be suffering from MAM/SAM at the time of screening; mothers of children identified as non-MAM/SAM case are usually sent home without receiving any health or nutrition inputs and as a result, may fail to come back for screening because they do not see any tangible benefit associated with their participation in the screening. This project will specifically address these gaps by assessing the effect of an integrated approach consisting of higher screening coverage and preventive Behavior Change Communication (BCC) + Small-Quantity Lipid-based Nutrient supplementation (SQ-LNS) on both prevention and treatment of child undernutrition.

Because of the intended dual role of BCC/SQ-LNS on child undernutrition in this study - e.g. to help prevent child undernutrition and enhance the coverage of screening, referral and treatment of SAM/MAM, it is necessary to combine two study designs to rigorously evaluate the impact of the proposed intervention and to tease out the contribution of prevention and enhanced coverage/treatment to the overall impact on child malnutrition. The proposed study will therefore use two types of study designs. The first one is a repeated cross-sectional design that will compare select study outcomes between intervention and control groups at endline, after 24 months of program implementation. These cross-sectional surveys among children 6-23 months, at baseline and after 24 months (on different children) will be used to assess the impact of the intervention on the prevalence of several outcomes, including the prevalence of MAM/SAM and stunting, the coverage of MAM/SAM screening and maternal ENA/IYCF/WASH knowledge and practices. The second study design entails a longitudinal design whereby individual children will be recruited at 6 months of age and followed-up monthly until they reach 24 months of age.This design will allow us to assess the intervention's effects on the incidence, recovery and recurrence rates of MAM/SAM.

child acute malnutrition prevention, behavior change communication, lipid-based nutrient supplement, screening coverage

Behavior change communication (BCC) on Essential Nutrition Actions (ENA), Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) and Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is provided during monthly meetings for children 6-23 months of age

Behavior change communication (BCC) on Essential Nutrition Actions (ENA), Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) and Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is provided during monthly meetings for children 6-23 months of age Caregivers with children 6-23 months of age that attend Counselling meetings will be provided with a monthly dose of SQ-LNS (20g/day)

A monthly dose of SQ-LNS (31 sachets of 20g) will be distributed to mothers attending counselling sessions

Monthly group counselling meetings organized at village level. Caregivers of participating children are invited to attend monthly counselling meetings that treat topics on child nutrition, health, hygiene and good sanitary practices. During these visits children are also screened for acute malnutrition measuring arm circumference.

Prevalence of acute child malnutrition defined by WHZ<-2 or MUAC <125mm or bilateral pitting edema in children 6-23 months of age

Screening coverage of acute child malnutrition (proportion of children monthly screened / total number of eligible children (aged 6-23 months)

Compliance to treatment of acute malnutrition (% of cases that complete treatment over total admitted)

Prevalence of Severe Acute Malnutrition defined by a WHZ<-3 or bilateral pitting edema or a MUAC<115mm

Caregiver's knowledge and practices related to Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF), Essential Nutrition Actions (ENA) and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)

Relapse rate after treatment of MAM/SAM (proportion WHZ<-2 or MUAC<125mm or bilateral pitting edema after discharge from MAM or SAM treatment program over a total number of children treated

Cross-sectional study (baseline and endline) Inclusion Criteria: At least one index child 6-23 months of age in the household Mother should be living in the study area since the index child's delivery Singleton infants Exclusion Criteria: Index child should not present congenital deformations that hamper anthropometric measurements Longitudinal study Inclusion Criteria: Child 6-6.9 months of age; Child with WHZ>-2 and MUAC>125 mm and no bilateral pitting edema Mother should be living in the study area since the index child's delivery Singleton infants Exclusion Criteria: Congenital malformations that make anthropometric measurements impossible Mother planning to leave the study are in the coming year

Huybregts L, Le Port A, Becquey E, Zongrone A, Barba FM, Rawat R, Leroy JL, Ruel MT. Impact on child acute malnutrition of integrating small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplements into community-level screening for acute malnutrition: A cluster-randomized controlled trial in Mali. PLoS Med. 2019 Aug 27;16(8):e1002892. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002892. eCollection 2019 Aug.

Huybregts L, Becquey E, Zongrone A, Le Port A, Khassanova R, Coulibaly L, Leroy JL, Rawat R, Ruel MT. The impact of integrated prevention and treatment on child malnutrition and health: the PROMIS project, a randomized control trial in Burkina Faso and Mali. BMC Public Health. 2017 Mar 9;17(1):237. doi: 10.1186/s12889-017-4146-6.