Engaging Fathers for Effective Child Nutrition and Development in Tanzania

The overall aim of EFFECTS is to develop, implement, and evaluate nutrition and parenting interventions that will be delivered by community health workers in the Mara region of Tanzania. We will use a 2x2 factorial cluster randomized controlled study design, plus a local standard of care control group, to evaluate the effectiveness of EFFECTS on the primary outcomes of early child nutrition and development. In total, there will be five study arms: nutrition intervention with mothers, nutrition intervention with mothers and fathers, bundled nutrition and parenting intervention with mothers, bundled nutrition and parenting intervention with mothers and fathers, and a local standard of care control. We hypothesize that an intervention approach that engages fathers will benefit the primary outcomes; a bundled nutrition and parenting package will benefit the same primary outcomes; and that the combined intervention approach ‐ that both engages fathers and bundles nutrition and parenting messages ‐ will have additive benefits on the primary outcomes.