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Improving early childhood care and development, HIV-testing, treatment and support, and nutrition in Mokhotlong, Lesotho: study protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trial

Tomlinson, M; Skeen, S; Marlow, M; Cluver, L; Cooper, P; Murray, L; Mofokeng, S; ... Sherr, L; + view all (2016) Improving early childhood care and development, HIV-testing, treatment and support, and nutrition in Mokhotlong, Lesotho: study protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trial. Trials , 17 , Article 538. 10.1186/s13063-016-1658-9. Green open access

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Abstract

Background: Since 1990, the lives of 48 million children under the age of 5 years have been saved because of increased investments in reducing child mortality. However, despite these unprecedented gains, 250 million children younger than 5 years in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) cannot meet their developmental potential due to poverty, poor health and nutrition, and lack of necessary stimulation and care. Lesotho has high levels of poverty, HIV, and malnutrition, all of which affect child development outcomes. There is a unique opportunity to address these complex issues through the widespread network of informal preschools in rural villages in the country, which provide a setting for inclusive, integrated Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) and HIV and nutrition interventions. Methods: We are conducting a cluster randomised controlled trial in Mokhotlong district, Lesotho, to evaluate a newly developed community-based intervention program to integrate HIV-testing and treatment services, ECCD, and nutrition education for caregivers with children aged 1–5 years living in rural villages. Caregivers and their children are randomly assigned by village to intervention or control condition. We select, train, and supervise community health workers recruited to implement the intervention, which consists of nine group-based sessions with caregivers and children over 12 weeks (eight weekly sessions, and a ninth top-up session 1 month later), followed by a locally hosted community health outreach day event. Group-based sessions focus on using early dialogic book-sharing to promote cognitive development and caregiver-child interaction, health-related messages, including motivation for HIV-testing and treatment uptake for young children, and locally appropriate nutrition education. All children aged 1–5 years and their primary caregivers living in study villages are eligible for participation. Caregivers and their children will be interviewed and assessed at baseline, after completion of the intervention, and 12 months post intervention. Discussion: This study provides a unique opportunity to assess the potential of an integrated early childhood development intervention to prevent or mitigate developmental delays in children living in a context of extreme poverty and high HIV rates in rural Lesotho. This paper presents the intervention content and research protocol for the study.

Type: Article
Title: Improving early childhood care and development, HIV-testing, treatment and support, and nutrition in Mokhotlong, Lesotho: study protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trial
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1186/s13063-016-1658-9
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-016-1658-9
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © The Author(s). 2016 This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Keywords: Early childhood development, HIV, Nutrition, Lesotho, Maternal and child health, Community health workers, Paraprofessionals
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute for Global Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute for Global Health > Infection and Population Health
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1529134
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