Recent Evidence of the Effectiveness of Educational Interventions for Improving Complementary Feeding Practices in Developing Countries

Abstract

Inappropriate complementary feeding practices have been identified as the major causes of malnutrition in young children in developing countries. This article reviewed literature on complementary feeding educational interventions from 1998 onwards. The purpose of this study was to provide evidence from published studies in the past decade on the effectiveness of educational intervention programs on improving complementary feeding practices in the developing world. The literature search was performed through PubMed/Medline database with the following key words: infant feeding, weaning and intervention, and identified a total of 15 original educational intervention studies. Evidence from these studies supports that educational intervention can effectively improve complementary feeding practices and child nutrition and growth. The intervention should be culturally sensitive, accessible and integrated with local resources.

Effectiveness of Baby Friendly Community Initiative (BFCI) on complementary feeding in Koibatek, Kenya: a randomized control study

“…Findings of this study are further supported by a systematic review that reviewed 15 intervention studies, and resolved that education interventions considering culture and local resources can successfully improve complementary feeding practices [30]. …”

Effectiveness of a nutrition education package in improving feeding practices, dietary adequacy and growth of infants and young children in rural Tanzania: rationale, design and methods of a cluster randomised trial

“…target behaviours) were identified and practical strategies were selected to put the theoretical methods into practice [31]. Systematic reviews [14–16], individual nutrition education and counselling interventions [20, 21] and summary of theoretical methods [31] were used in the selection of existing methods and techniques, and the development of new strategies which fitted our intervention and behavioural objectives. Theory of Planned Behaviour was used as the main focus of behavioural change during the selection of theory-based methods and strategies [33].…”

Systematic reviews on selected nutrition interventions: descriptive assessment of conduct and methodological challenges

“…Few other reviews reported considerable variation in outcome definition across studies, for example definition of exclusive breastfeeding and mixed breast feeding [38], definitions of diarrhoea [30,34] and the definition of health care workers delivering the interventions [39]. In areas where WHO standard definitions exist like undernutrition, reviews have used standard WHO definitions [40][41][42], while for some reviews, reviewers have self-defined the outcome for standardization [43,44]. Forty three of the included reviews considered contextual factors and conducted sensitivity and subgroup analysis to adjust the outcomes according to these factors.…”