Study Status: Enrolling by invitation
Recruit Status: Enrolling by invitation
Study Type: Interventional
Official Title: Assessing the Effect of Sustainable Small-scale Egg Production on Maternal and Child Nutrition in Rural Zambia
Brief Summary:
Animal source foods (ASF), such as meat and eggs, are rich in nutrients critical for growth and development. Yet, for poor children in developing countries, ASF consumption is limited by cost, inadequate caregiver knowledge, and lack of local production and physical availability. The impact of HH- and village-level livestock interventions on household dietary diversity and nutritional status in resource-poor communities is not well established. The objective of this study is to test the effectiveness of local egg production intervention on maternal and child diets and child nutrition status.
This project takes place in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia in partnership with a local non-governmental organization, COMACO. Twenty communities will be assigned to the intervention, and 20 matched communities will be selected as controls. In each intervention community, an egg production facility will be built, owned, and operated by trained COMACO farmers. Simultaneously, a nutrition-focused behavior change campaign will be disseminated to all communities.
Households (HHs) in each community will be sampled twice annually for 1 year pre-intervention (baseline) and 2 years post-intervention to assess dietary diversity and nutritional status. Data analysis will test for a change in these outcomes from baseline in each intervention community compared to the matched control community.