Operational research for Ethiopia Integrated Nutrition Project (EINP)

INTERVENTION: Community‐based Participatory Nutrition Education (Behavior Change Communication form), Community‐based Management of Acute Malnutrition, and Essential Nutrition Action activity (nutrition counselling) In the intervention area, the CPNE program, the ENA activity and the CMAM program will be conducted concurrently, and in the control area, the ENA activity and the CMAM program will be implemented only. Target children differ by type of intervention. Undernourished children and their caregivers will receive the CPNE program by project staff, the ENA activity will be given to all mothers with children under two years old as much as trained volunteers can visit households, and moderately or severely undernourished children will be admitted to the CMAM program. Besides we attempted to measure differences in child growth such as z‐scores at whole the community level considering all children at 6 to 24 months of age not specifically at individual children level who directly receive interventions. Since the above programs, especially the CPNE program and the ENA activity, are publicly conducted in communities, we wanted to measure the direct and indirect effects of the interventions together. CONDITION: Child undernutrition ; Nutritional, Metabolic, Endocrine PRIMARY OUTCOME: 1. Length‐for‐age; 2. Weight‐for‐age; 3. Weight‐for‐length z scores; 4. Prevalence of stunting, wasting and being underweight; ; Children 6 to 12 months of age are measured by trained anthropometrists from the time of enrollment, at every 3 months, for five times, for their height with locally manufactured measuring boards nearest to 0.1 cm and weight with electronic weighing scales to nearest 0.01 kg. For example, a child whose age is 9 months old at enrollment will be measured at 9, 12, 15, 18, and 21 months old. SECONDARY OUTCOME: Complementary feeding practices such as dietary diversity and feeding frequency, and hand washing practices; ; Mothers will be asked at the same timepoints that the primary outcomes are measured about her feeding and hygienic practices, e.g. how and what she fed child in the last 24 hours, and when she washed her hands by enumerators, through household visits. INCLUSION CRITERIA: Infants 6 to 24 months of age