TY - JOUR
T1 - Promoting healthy behaviors among egyptian mothers
T2 - A quasi-experimental study of a health communication package delivered by community organizations
AU - Brasington, Angela
AU - Abdelmegeid, Ali
AU - Dwivedi, Vikas
AU - Kols, Adrienne
AU - Kim, Young Mi
AU - Khadka, Neena
AU - Rawlins, Barbara
AU - Gibson, Anita
N1 - Funding Information:
We gratefully acknowledge members of the more than 100 Egyptian CDAs, including 1,200 women CHWs, who worked tirelessly to support thousands of pregnant women and new mothers with health promotion activities. We also thank Egyptian Ministry of Health and Ministry of Social Affairs staff who were instrumental in supporting program implementation. The authors acknowledge the hard work of Dr. Issam El Adawi and all SMART project staff, and the close collaboration and contributions of Mr. George Sanad and Dr. Shahira Hussein of United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Egypt, Office of Health and Population, and Dr. Nahed Matta, of USAID/Washington, Global Health Bureau. Thanks to Farouk Salah and Mark Emerson for their help with data analysis and to Eric Sarriot, Jim Ricca, and Jeanne Russell for helpful comments on the draft manuscript. This research was made possible through support provided by USAID. The opinions are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Brasington et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2016/3
Y1 - 2016/3
N2 - Decisions made at the household level, for example, to seek antenatal care or breastfeed, can have a direct impact on the health of mothers and newborns. The SMART Community-based Initiatives program in Egypt worked with community development associations to encourage better household decision-making by training community health workers to disseminate information and encourage healthy practices during home visits, group sessions, and community activities with pregnant women, mothers of young children, and their families. A quasi-experimental design was used to evaluate the program, with household surveys conducted before and after the intervention in intervention and comparison areas. Survey questions asked about women's knowledge and behaviors related to maternal and newborn care and child nutrition and, at the endline, exposure to SMART activities. Exposure to program activities was high in intervention areas of Upper Egypt: 91% of respondents reported receiving home visits and 84% attended group sessions. In Lower Egypt, these figures were 58% and 48%, respectively. Knowledge of danger signs related to pregnancy, delivery, and newborn illness increased significantly more in intervention than comparison areas in both regions (with one exception in Lower Egypt), after controlling for child's age and woman's education; this pattern also occurred for two of five behaviors (antenatal care visits and consumption of iron-folate tablets). Findings suggest that there may have been a significant dose-response relationship between exposure to SMART activities and certain knowledge and behavioral indicators, especially in Upper Egypt. The findings demonstrate the ability of civil society organizations with minimal health programming experience to increase knowledge and promote healthy behaviors among pregnant women and new mothers. The SMART approach offers a promising strategy to fill gaps in health education and counseling and strengthen community support for behavior change.
AB - Decisions made at the household level, for example, to seek antenatal care or breastfeed, can have a direct impact on the health of mothers and newborns. The SMART Community-based Initiatives program in Egypt worked with community development associations to encourage better household decision-making by training community health workers to disseminate information and encourage healthy practices during home visits, group sessions, and community activities with pregnant women, mothers of young children, and their families. A quasi-experimental design was used to evaluate the program, with household surveys conducted before and after the intervention in intervention and comparison areas. Survey questions asked about women's knowledge and behaviors related to maternal and newborn care and child nutrition and, at the endline, exposure to SMART activities. Exposure to program activities was high in intervention areas of Upper Egypt: 91% of respondents reported receiving home visits and 84% attended group sessions. In Lower Egypt, these figures were 58% and 48%, respectively. Knowledge of danger signs related to pregnancy, delivery, and newborn illness increased significantly more in intervention than comparison areas in both regions (with one exception in Lower Egypt), after controlling for child's age and woman's education; this pattern also occurred for two of five behaviors (antenatal care visits and consumption of iron-folate tablets). Findings suggest that there may have been a significant dose-response relationship between exposure to SMART activities and certain knowledge and behavioral indicators, especially in Upper Egypt. The findings demonstrate the ability of civil society organizations with minimal health programming experience to increase knowledge and promote healthy behaviors among pregnant women and new mothers. The SMART approach offers a promising strategy to fill gaps in health education and counseling and strengthen community support for behavior change.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0151783
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0151783
M3 - Article
C2 - 26989898
AN - SCOPUS:84962423361
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 11
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 3
M1 - e0151783
ER -