Effects of nutrition counselling and unconditional cash transfer on child growth and family food security in internally displaced person camps in Somalia – A quasi-experimental study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background:The effects of nutrition counselling (NC) and unconditional cash transfer (UCT) in improving growth in children under five and household food security are poorly understood in humanitarian settings. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of NC and NC combined with unconditional cash transfer (NC+UCT) on children’s growth and food security in Somalia.Methods:The study was performed with a quasi-experimental design in two districts in the Banadir region of Somalia. The study used two-stage stratified sampling. Caregivers (n=255) of mildly to moderately malnourished children aged 6 to 59 months old (n= 184) were randomized to the NC, NC+UCT and control groups. The interventions consisted of weekly NC for three months alone or in combination with UCT. The primary outcome variables of the study were indicators of children’s nutrition, i.e., wasting. The secondary outcome variables were indicators of underweight, stunting, and food security, i.e., dietary diversity, household hunger scale and food consumption scores. Data were collected at baseline and 11 months after programme implementation. Difference-in-differences analysis was used to estimate the effect of the interventions.Results:Our study did not find any significant impact on child wasting (aOR: 0.81, 95% CI: 0.26–2.56, p = 0.722), underweight (aOR: 1.29, 95% CI: 0.40–3.48, p = 0.603), or stunting (aOR: 0.84, 95% CI: 0.29–2.46, p = 0.764) compared to the control group. Similarly, in the NC+UCT group, we did not find any significant reduction in wasting (aOR: 0.79, 95% CI: 0.26–2.36, p = 0.669), underweight (aOR: 0.88, 95% CI: 0.33–2.35, p = 0.806), or stunting (aOR: 1.51, 95% CI: 0.55–4.20, p = 0.426) compared to the control group. No intervention effect was observed on food security outcomes, child dietary diversity scores, minimum child dietary diversity (≥4 food groups) or household expenses (Table 3).Conclusion:NC, alone or in combination with UCT, did not impact children’s growth or household food security. A culturally tailored NC programme over a longer period and larger, regular, and predictable transfers might result in a significant reduction in malnutrition and food insecurity.Trial registrationThe evaluation was registered on the RIDIE registry (RIDIE-STUDY-ID-5a1264bdb207a) on 11/19/2017.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".