Family and Childhood Development: Kizazi Kijacho ('The Next Generation') - a Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial
试验速览
- 阶段
- 不适用
- 状态
- 已完成
- 发起方
- 入组人数
- 3,585
- 试验地点
- 1
- 主要终点
- Children's nutritional status
研究概览
简要总结
Digital solutions can significantly improve the delivery of Early Childhood Development (ECD) services in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). Traditional home-visits and community group-based parenting approaches require intense levels of training, mentoring and supervision of Community Health Workers (CHWs) that is difficult to sustain when transitioning to scale. Context relevant digital tools can support CHWs in delivering high-quality, respectful, and standardised multi-sectoral household ECD services by tailoring services to pregnant women and engaging male caregivers. This could have significant impacts on child development, including stimulation, speech and language development, nutrition, and cognition. Moreover, cash delivered through digital modes of payment is faster, safer, easier to administer, is scalable and has potential to empower women, influence parental investment and affect household decision making. The study will conduct a clustered multi-arm Randomised Controlled Trial (cRCT) targeting pregnant mothers across all 7 districts (and all 8 district councils) in the Dodoma region in Tanzania. Following the study sample for 15 months from 5-7 months pregnancy. The study will test and compare the causal effects of (i) a digitally supported Parenting Intervention delivered by CHWs, which aims to improve caregivers' access to quality ECD services; (ii) a mobile unconditional cash transfer which aims to relax financial resource constraints; and (iii) a digitally supported Parenting Intervention when combined with a mobile unconditional cash transfer. Findings from the study are expected to have important policy implications for the design of scalable ECD interventions targeting pregnant mothers in Tanzania and other LMIC settings.
详细描述
The study will randomly sample 258 public Health Dispensaries (with at least one officially registered Community Health Worker (CHW) working at the facility) across all 7 districts (and all 8 district councils) in the Dodoma region, Tanzania, to participate in a clustered multi-arm Randomised Controlled Trial (cRCT). The 258 Health Dispensaries (HDs) will be randomised to a (i) Control group (81 HDs) where CHWs deliver Early Childhood Development (ECD) services as per existing government guidelines, (ii) Parenting group (88 HDs) where existing CHWs will be trained to use an innovative digital application for the delivery of integrated ECD services for a period of 15 months, from 5-7 months pregnancy onwards and, (iii) an Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) only group (89 HDs) where CHWs deliver ECD services as per existing government guidelines but where the study sample of families will receive a bi-monthly UCT fixed amount of 109,000 TZS (equivalent to 47USD) for 15 months (7 transfers in total). The randomisation will be stratified by district council and by whether there is more than one community in the HD catchment area.
Within each of the HD catchment areas in the Control group, one village (in rural areas) or one 'mtaa' (in urban areas) served by the HD and where at least one officially registered CHW is available to work will be randomly sampled. For the 88 Parenting HDs and the 89 UCT only HDs, all villages/mtaas (with at least one available officially registered CHW) will be included in their catchment area to become part of the study. In total, that will give 390 study villages/mtaas in the study sample.
Within each of the selected study villages/mtaas, one CHW will be selected whose catchment area will become the geographic area of interest, i.e., the study community. The study community can be the entire village, a hamlet (sub-village) or an mtaa, depending on the size of the CHW's catchment area. This gives a total of 82 Control communities, 155 Parenting communities, and 155 UCT communities in the study.
Within the Parenting and UCT only study groups, then second layer of randomisation will be done. In the Parenting group (154 communities across 88 HDs), communities will be randomly assigned, stratified by HD, to either one of the following two treatment arms: (i) Parenting only (77 communities) and (ii) Parenting+UCT (77 communities) where the Parenting Intervention will be delivered along with a bi-monthly unconditional mobile money transfer of 77,000 TZS (33 USD) from 5-7 months pregnancy over a period of 15 months (7 transfers in total). In the UCT only group (155 communities across 89 HDs), study communities will be randomly assigned, stratified by HDs, to either one of two treatment arms: (i) UCT only fixed amount (80 communities) where families will receive a fixed bi-monthly cash transfers each of 109,000 TZS (47 USD) over a period of 15 months (7 transfers in total) and (ii) UCT only vary amount where 77 communities will be randomly allocated to one of the following bi-monthly UCT amounts: 32,000 TZS (14 USD), 77,000 TZS (33 USD), 109,000 TZS (47 USD) over a period of 15 months (7 transfers in total). In each of these two study arms, further randomisation will be done whether the mobile money transfer is given to the father/spouse or the mother.
10 eligible women per community will de randomly sampled to participate in the study, except the bi-monthly UCT vary amount group, where only 5 eligible women per community will be randomly sampled.
研究设计
- 研究类型
- Interventional
- 分配方式
- Randomized
- 干预模型
- Parallel
- 主要目的
- Health Services Research
- 盲法
- Double (Participant, Care Provider)
盲法说明
Pregnant mothers and Community Health Workers will not know about the intervention arm they will be randomised to.
入排标准
- 年龄范围
- 18 Years 至 —（Adult, Older Adult）
- 性别
- Female
- 接受健康志愿者
- 是
入选标准
- •Pregnant women aged 18 years or above, who are living in the select study communities and who are at least 20 weeks pregnant and less than 32 weeks pregnant at the time of the baseline data collection survey visit to the study community region, Tanzania.
排除标准
- •Households without pregnant women aged 18 years or above, who are living in the select study communities and who are at least 20 weeks pregnant and less than 32 weeks pregnant at the time of the baseline data collection survey visit to the study community region, Tanzania.
- •If the pregnancy does not result in a live birth after enrolment, the respondent will be excluded from the study at the time of endline survey.
研究组 & 干预措施
Control
This group will serve as the Control group (81 HDs, 81 communities, 810 households) to identify the effects of a Parenting only, Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) only, and Parenting+UCT interventions. Caregivers will continue benefiting from a traditional government CHW home visit program, focusing on maternal and child health and nutrition, which is currently in practice in Tanzania.
Parenting only
88 HDs, 77 communities, 770 households. Existing CHWs will be trained to use an innovative digital application for the delivery of integrated ECD services to mothers who are at least 20 weeks pregnant and less than 32 weeks pregnant for a period of 15 months. CHWs will provide tailored ECD services (e.g., prompting messages tailored to child age and triggering follow-up visits conditional on changing conditions), covering all aspects of the Nurturing Care Framework (Health, Nutrition, Responsive Caregiving, Early Learning, Safety and Security (WHO, UNICEF, World Bank Group, 2018)). Real time data will be recorded by the CHWs in each visit using the application. Data will include information on visit attendance, activities conducted, home environment, caregiver practices, and CHW observations. From when the target child is 6 months old, group sessions will be organised by CHWs, focusing on caregiver-child interaction and stimulation activities.
干预措施: Digital application supported CHW Parenting Intervention (Other)
Parenting+Unconditional Cash Transfer
88 HDs, 77 communities, 770 households. In addition to the Parenting Intervention, pregnant women in the study sample will receive a bi-monthly unconditional mobile money transfer of 77,000 TZS (33 USD) from 5-7 months pregnancy over a period of 15 months (7 transfers in total).
干预措施: Digital application supported CHW Parenting Intervention (Other)
Parenting+Unconditional Cash Transfer
88 HDs, 77 communities, 770 households. In addition to the Parenting Intervention, pregnant women in the study sample will receive a bi-monthly unconditional mobile money transfer of 77,000 TZS (33 USD) from 5-7 months pregnancy over a period of 15 months (7 transfers in total).
干预措施: Unconditional Cash Transfer Intervention (Other)
Unconditional Cash Transfer only fixed amount
89 HDs, 80 communities, 800 households. Households, in addition to the CHWs delivering health and nutrition services as usual, will receive a fixed bi-monthly unconditional mobile money transfer each of 109,000 TZS (47USD) from 5-7 months pregnancy over a period of 15 months (7 transfers in total). The transfer will be randomly assigned between mothers and fathers/spouses within each community, where in half of the eligible households, mothers will receive the transfer and in the other half, fathers/spouses (or household head where the father/spouse is not available) will receive the transfer.
干预措施: Unconditional Cash Transfer only Intervention fixed amount (Other)
Unconditional Cash Transfer only vary amount
89 HDs, 75 communities, 375 households. In addition to the previous four main treatment arms, there is another UCT only treatment study group where the level of the cash amount varies across communities. Communities, in addition to the CHWs delivering health and nutrition services as usual, in this group will be randomised to receive one of the bi-monthly unconditional mobile money transfer amounts: 32,000 TZS (14USD), 77,000 TZS (33USD), 109,000 TZS (47USD) from 5-7 months pregnancy over a period of 15 months (7 transfers in total). The transfers will be randomly assigned between mothers and fathers/spouses within each community, where in half of the eligible households, mothers will receive the transfer and in the other half, fathers/spouses (or household head where the father/spouse is not available) will receive the transfer.
干预措施: Unconditional Cash Transfer only Intervention vary amount (Other)
结局指标
主要结局
Children's nutritional status
时间窗: Endline survey (after 15 months)
Weight and height will be measured at the time of the follow-up survey to obtain the height-for-age-z-scores and weight-for-height-age-z-scores, standard measures outlined by WHO. Mid Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) will be also collected (WHO, 2006). Scores will be standardized within the study sample for analysis, so all measures are in the same metric. The measurement of nutritional outcomes will be aggregated using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to get latent factor(s) that summarizes effectively the information given by the individual outcomes. Different nutritional outcomes will be combined if the fit of the model(s) are better than using the individual z-scores.
Children's cognitive, speech and language development
时间窗: Endline survey (after 15 months)
Direct assessment and parental report will be combined. For direct assessment, the Bayley-III (Bayley, 2006) suitably adapted for Tanzanian context will be used. Cognition, receptive and expressive language subtests will be selected. For parental report, selected items of the CREDI (McCoy et al, 2018) for cognition, receptive and expressive language subtests and a short version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (Jackson, 2012) that measures expressive language will be used, both already adapted for Tanzania. Raw scores will be standardized within the study sample for analysis. The measurement of outcomes will be aggregated using SEM to get latent factor(s) that summarizes effectively the information given by the individual items. Direct assessment and parental reports will be combined as well as the different child development domains if the fit of the model(s) are better than using the original raw scoring techniques were higher scores mean better outcomes.
次要结局
- Child rearing practices(15 months starting with baseline (October-December 2022) and finishing with endline survey (January-March 2024))
- Children's socio-emotional development(Endline survey (after 15 months))
研究者
Ingvild Almås
Professor
Stockholm University