Integrate nutrition education and stimulation parenting interventions into the public health system: evidence from China

Last registered on August 31, 2020

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Integrate nutrition education and stimulation parenting interventions into the public health system: evidence from China
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0004008
Initial registration date
March 13, 2019

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
March 15, 2019, 10:48 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
August 31, 2020, 11:20 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Center for Experimental Economics in Education at Shaanxi Normal University

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2019-03-16
End date
2020-08-31
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Due to the large number of children at risk of not reaching their development potentials, developing countries need to find innovative methods that can ensure effective provision of high-quality early childhood programmes at scale. The goal of this study is to examine the effectiveness of integrating a multi-purpose parenting intervention that targets both nutrition and psychosocial stimulation into a pre-existing public health service in rural China. 206 natural villages will be randomly assigned to either control or treatment group. In collaboration with the National Health Commission (NHC) of the People’s Republic of China and Save the Children, the integrated programme builds on the existing health infrastructure and is delivered by village-level public health workers.
In the treated natural villages, parenting trainers, selected by the HFPC, will provide parenting training on nutrition and stimulating activities via fortnightly home visits and monthly group activities. During each home visit, parenting trainers will first spend 30 minutes teaching the primary caregiver how to stimulate each child’s development through fun and interactive play activities (using a set staged-based curriculum), and then spend 10 minutes measuring child’s anthropometrics (height and weight) and providing nutrition guidance. For the group activities, parenting trainers will invite all assigned caregiver-baby dyads to join, and then hold a group reading/play/story session. The intervention will be provided for exactly one year from May 2019 to May 2020.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Shi, Yaojiang . 2020. "Integrate nutrition education and stimulation parenting interventions into the public health system: evidence from China." AEA RCT Registry. August 31. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4008-1.2000000000000002
Former Citation
Shi, Yaojiang . 2020. "Integrate nutrition education and stimulation parenting interventions into the public health system: evidence from China." AEA RCT Registry. August 31. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/4008/history/74979
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The study will use data from a Randomized Controlled Trial whereby sampled natural villages will be randomly assigned to either the treatment or control group (We will further discuss the randomisation procedure and sampling method in section 2.2). In the treated natural villages, parenting trainers, selected by the NHC, will provide parenting training on nutrition and stimulating activities via fortnightly home visits and monthly group activities. During each home visit, parenting trainers will first spend 30 minutes teaching the primary caregiver how to stimulate each child’s development through fun and interactive play activities (using a set staged-based curriculum), and then spend 10 minutes measuring child’s anthropometrics (height and weight) and providing nutrition guidance. For the group activities, parenting trainers will invite all assigned caregiver-baby dyads to join, and then hold a group reading/play/story session. The intervention will be provided for exactly one year from May 2019 to May 2020. One parenting trainer will be assigned 5 to 15 children depending on the travel distance and his/her existing work load.
We plan to invite all children aged 6 to 24 months residing in the treatment village to join the programme. We will ask all caregivers of the participating children oral informed consent before enrolling them into the evaluation study and the programme.
(see uploaded “Pre-analysis plan for integrate nutrition education and stimulation parenting interventions into the public health system.pdf”)
Intervention Start Date
2019-05-01
Intervention End Date
2020-07-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Child's psychosocial development outcomes (cognitive, language, motor and socio-emotion) measured using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development III.
Child’s anthropometrics and haemoglobin concentration level.
see uploaded “Pre-analysis plan for integrate nutrition education and stimulation parenting interventions into the public health system.pdf”
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Randomized Controlled Trial. (see uploaded “Pre-analysis plan for Integrate nutrition education and stimulation parenting interventions into the public health system.pdf”)
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
With each selected cluster, we will first randomly generate a natural village ID. Using the natural village IDs, we will randomly assign the villages to either treatment or control group using STATA14. (see uploaded “Pre-analysis plan for Integrate nutrition education and stimulation parenting interventions into the public health system.pdf”)
Randomization Unit
natural village. (see uploaded “Pre-analysis plan for Integrate nutrition education and stimulation parenting interventions into the public health system.pdf”)
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
At least 206 natural village (see uploaded “Pre-analysis plan for Integrate nutrition education and stimulation parenting interventions into the public health system.pdf”)
Sample size: planned number of observations
At least 1012 children (see uploaded “Pre-analysis plan for Integrate nutrition education and stimulation parenting interventions into the public health system.pdf”)
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
103 natural village in treatment; 103 natural villages in control
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Kunming Medical University
IRB Approval Date
2019-03-04
IRB Approval Number
N/A
IRB Name
Kunming Medical University
IRB Approval Date
2019-03-04
IRB Approval Number
N/A
Analysis Plan

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Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
July 31, 2020, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
No
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials