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The problem
Intervention: Integrated Early Childhood Development (ECD) counselling using the WHO/UNICEF Care for Child Development package, delivered during PMTCT waiting times at health facilities, comprising up to 8 sessions over 12 months.
Who it was tested with: 607 mother-infant pairs (average age 30 years and 7 weeks respectively) enrolled in PMTCT programs at 6 health facilities in Malawi between June 2018 and December 2019..
Children or communities are compared with a group that did not receive the intervention, or followed over years. This is the design that best separates what the intervention did from everything else that changed.
"We conducted a programmatic, observational cohort study with mother-infant pairs (MIPs) enrolled in prevention-of-mother-to-child-transmission (PMTCT) programs in Malawi to assess the feasibility and potential HIV-related benefits of integrating Early Childhood Development (ECD) services into PMTCT programs... Routine facility-level data from six comparison health facilities were collected as an adhoc standard of care comparison." The study uses a comparison group approach to evaluate outcomes, meeting the threshold for experimental design despite the observational nature.
Non-randomised design with non-equivalent comparison groups; comparison facilities provided routine facility data rather than matched cohorts; potential confounding from unmeasured differences between intervention and comparison settings; no assessment of the specific ECD benefit independent from the integration approach.
Across countries and designs
4 studies · 1 country
