A sustainable organizational structure to integrate psycho-social stimulation programme into primary health care services in Bangladesh: protocol for a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial on scaling up early childhood development activities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Early childhood development (ECD) in low to middle-income nations has been a pressing concern for the last two to three decades. It is estimated that approximately 250 million children under the age of five are not reaching their full developmental potential due to factors such as poverty, malnutrition, and insufficient home stimulation. It is estimated that in Bangladesh, 44% of the children under 5 years live in poverty and 31% are stunted, and both factors are risks for poor childhood development. We aim to develop a sustainable, scaled ECD programme using an evidence-based curriculum of psychosocial stimulation for disadvantaged Bangladeshi children. METHODS: Approximately 10,000 malnourished children aged 6-24 months will be identified by mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) < 13.5 cm, assessed by government health staff in over 500 community clinics (CCs) in 21 sub-districts of Hobiganj, Brahmanbaria, Laxmipur and Narsingdi districts. The children and their mothers will participate in the psychosocial stimulation programme that will be delivered fortnightly for one year to small groups at the CCs by health workers. We will train approximately 1,500 health staff in rural CCs to deliver the ECD sessions. We will follow a cascade training model to train personnel at all levels of the primary health care system. A subsample will be evaluated using a cluster randomized controlled trial in 48 CCs (24 intervention and 24 control). From each CC, 10 children aged 6-24 months will be tested before and after the programme. The primary outcome is children's cognitive development and we will also measure language composite scores on the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development. Secondary outcomes are children's growth, maternal knowledge and depressive symptoms, and stimulation in the home. Intention-to-treat analysis will be used to assess intervention effects. DISCUSSION: There are no existing ECD services for the children under three years delivered by the health care system in Bangladesh. This study will help policy makers to consider incorporating ECD activities into the treatment of malnourished children in rural CCs, under the government's primary health care system, thereby developing a sustainable structure for improving disadvantaged children's development. The findings will also provide information to facilitate scaling ECD in the primary health care systems in other low and middle-income countries. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04093934 (Date: 13 April 2022).
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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 | 0.030 | 0.026 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.012 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.066 | 0.007 |
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".