Our teams have been working hard to influence key decision-makers to use a community approach to nutrition – to help change the way the world tackles malnutrition for good. Thanks to the success of the RCT in Kenya, the Kenyan government is exploring policy change to enable CHWs to treat more children with malnutrition. Evidence from the RCT also fed into WHO’s review of wasting guidelines which now endorses CHW treatment, providing they receive adequate training, supervision and resource.
From our robust evidence we have produced three manuscripts that have been submitted to journels which focus on; Effectiveness Cost effectiveness Qualitative insights. These will be used to influence national discussions around policy change. A number of research briefs which can be used for communication and advocacy in the in the interim are below:
- Research brief: 'Treatment of Moderate Acute Malnutrition by Community Health Volunteers is Cost-Effective: Insights from Turkana County, Kenya' 2023
- Research brief: 'The community has good perceptions towards the management of acute malnutrition by community health volunteers: Findings from a qualitative study in Northern Kenya' 2023
We have also planned a number of robust economic evaluations to support decision makers (governments / MOH as well as the WHO) to evaluate which service delivery modalities are most cost effective in a given context and what it would cost to scale different approaches.
