Clinical trial NCT02903602: Sharing Histories: Test of a Teaching Method for Community Health Workers
Official title: Health in the Hands of Women: Test of a Community Health Worker Teaching Method "Sharing Histories"
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Infant Nutrition Disorders
Health Behavior
Keywords: sharing histories
autobiographical memory
health behavior
narrative communication
community health workers
global health
maternal and child health
stunting
Lead sponsor: Future Generations Graduate School
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
name: Instituto de Investigacion Nutricional, Peru
First posted: 2016-09-16
Enrollment: 600
Sex: ALL
Maximum age (years): 23
Standard ages: CHILD
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: PREVENTION

Brief summary: The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of an innovative methodology for training Community Health Workers that will improve their effectiveness in educating mothers to adopt best practice health behaviors in the home.

Detailed description: Objective: Training of community health workers (CHW) is a growing priority to close the gap between health services and mothers/families in resource poor communities. To address research needs on how to improve effectiveness of CHW training, the investigators tested an innovative CHW teaching methodology called "Sharing Histories" hypothesizing that this would empower and enable CHW to better teach mothers to improve health knowledge and behaviors that contribute to improved child growth.

Method: The study was a cluster-randomized controlled trial: 22 health facility jurisdictions were matched and randomly assigned as experimental or control. Health personnel Tutors and female CHW were trained using either the "Sharing Histories" methodology (experimental) or a standard but still participatory teaching method (control). Training content, materials, and other interventions were held constant between study groups. Impact on maternal knowledge and practices, and child growth and morbidity were measured in representative household surveys at baseline, midterm, and final evaluation, with 600 mothers interviewed - 300 in each study group - at each point in time.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Adult interviewed must be mother or guardian of a child under two years of age.
* Child from birth (0.1 months-old) to under two years of age (23.9 months-old).

Exclusion Criteria:

* If a mother selected for interview had more than one child under age two years, only the younger child was considered for the interview and anthropometry measurements.

Primary outcomes:
measure: Change in rate of stunting in children under two years of age (birth to 23.9 months of age)
timeFrame: Chidren born up to 24 months prior to the baseline survey in 2010. Children born up to 24 months prior to the final survey in 2014
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
Study officials:
affiliation: Future Generations Graduate School
name: Laura C. Altobelli, DrPH
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: