Peer-reviewed article
Impact of Harvest Lentil Vegetable Blend and Nutrition Education on Child Growth, Caregivers' Nutrition Knowledge, and WASH Practices.
Elyvine Ingabire-Gasana, Mary Murimi ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study tested the impact of providing a lentil-vegetable blend to young children and giving their caregivers nutrition education in Turkana, Kenya. Over three weeks, children who received the supplement showed improvements in weight and height measurements. Caregivers who received nutrition education also reported practising better hand-washing habits after toileting and before cooking.
Key points
- At baseline, 19% of children were stunted, 24% underweight, and 35% wasted
- Weight-for-age z-scores improved by 0.61 for children aged 6-12 months and 0.31 for children aged 13-47 months
- Weight-for-height z-scores improved by 0.84 for children aged 6-12 months and 0.42 for children aged 13-47 months
- Caregivers reporting hand-washing after defecation increased by 37% and before cooking increased by 26%
- Study achieved >70% retention of participants across the three-week period
Limitations
The study was very short (three weeks), making it unclear whether improvements would be sustained over longer periods. There was no control or comparison group, so it is unclear whether the improvements were due to the intervention, other factors, or a combination of both.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To assess the changes in child nutrition status, caregivers' knowledge, and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) practices following the provision of Harvest Lentil Vegetable Blend to children and a nutrition education intervention to their caregivers. DESIGN: Three-week pretest-posttest study. SETTING: Turkana, Kenya. PARTICIPANTS: Children aged 6-59 months (n = 162) and their caregivers (n = 127) completed the intervention, representing > 70% retention. INTERVENTIONS: Provision of Harvest Lentil Vegetable Blend to children and nutrition education intervention for caregivers on child feeding and WASH practices. MAIN OUTCOMES MEASURES: Children's anthropometric measurements, caregivers' nutrition knowledge, and WASH practices. ANALYSIS: Wilcoxon signed rank and McNemar tests. RESULTS: At baseline, 19%, 24%, and 35% of children were stunted, underweight, and wasted, respectively. At the endpoint, the weight-for-age z-scores increased by 0.61 (P = 0.04) for children 6-12 months and by 0.31 (P = 0.03) for children 13-47 months. Weight-for-height z-scores increased by 0.84 (P = 0.04) among children 6-12 months and by 0.42 (P = 0.04) among children 13-47 months. The proportion of caregivers who reported washing hands after defecation and before cooking increased by 37% and 26%, respectively (P = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: An on-site feeding program that used nutrient-dense supplemental food was associated with positive changes in children's nutrition status within a short duration. Nutrition education intervention increased the proportion of caregivers who practiced some key WASH practices.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Provision of Harvest Lentil Vegetable Blend (nutrient-dense supplemental food) to children aged 6-59 months combined with nutrition education intervention to caregivers on child feeding and WASH practices
- Population
- 162 children aged 6-59 months and 127 caregivers in Turkana, Kenya
Key finding
Weight-for-age z-scores increased by 0.61 (P = 0.04) for children 6-12 months and 0.31 (P = 0.03) for children 13-47 months
Ingabire-Gasana et al. · PubMed (US National Library of Medicine) · 12 Nov 2024