Dataset Information

Community-Based Health Financing and Child Stunting in Rural Rwanda.

ABSTRACT: We analyzed the likelihood of rural children (aged 6-24 months) being stunted according to whether they were enrolled in Mutuelles, a community-based health-financing program providing health insurance to rural populations and granting them access to health care, including nutrition services.We retrieved health facility data from the District Health System Strengthening Tool and calculated the percentage of rural health centers that provided nutrition-related services required by Mutuelles' minimum service package. We used data from the 2010 Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey and performed multilevel logistic analysis to control for clustering effects and sociodemographic characteristics. The final sample was 1061 children.Among 384 rural health centers, more than 90% conducted nutrition-related campaigns and malnutrition screening for children. Regardless of poverty status, the risk of being stunted was significantly lower (odds ratio = 0.60; 95% credible interval = 0.41, 0.83) for Mutuelles enrollees. This finding was robust to various model specifications (adjusted for Mutuelles enrollment, poverty status, other variables) or estimation methods (fixed and random effects).This study provides evidence of the effectiveness of Mutuelles in improving child nutrition status and supported the hypothesis about the role of Mutuelles in expanding medical and nutritional care coverage for children.

SUBMITTER: Lu C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4743535 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Community-Based Health Financing and Child Stunting in Rural Rwanda.

Lu Chunling C Mejía-Guevara Iván I Hill Kenneth K Farmer Paul P Subramanian S V SV Binagwaho Agnes A

American journal of public health 20151112 1

<h4>Objectives</h4>We analyzed the likelihood of rural children (aged 6-24 months) being stunted according to whether they were enrolled in Mutuelles, a community-based health-financing program providing health insurance to rural populations and granting them access to health care, including nutrition services.<h4>Methods</h4>We retrieved health facility data from the District Health System Strengthening Tool and calculated the percentage of rural health centers that provided nutrition-related s ...[more]

PMID: 26562109

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Project description:BackgroundCommunity health clubs are multi-session village-level gatherings led by trained facilitators and designed to promote healthy behaviours mainly related to water, sanitation, and hygiene. They have been implemented in several African and Asian countries but have never been evaluated rigorously. We aimed to evaluate the effect of two versions of the community health club model on child health and nutrition outcomes.MethodsWe did a cluster-randomised trial in Rusizi district, western Rwanda. We defined villages as clusters. We assessed villages for eligibility then randomly selected 150 for the study using a simple random sampling routine in Stata. We stratified villages by wealth index and by the proportion of children younger than 2 years with caregiver-reported diarrhoea within the past 7 days. We randomly allocated these villages to three study groups: no intervention (control; n=50), eight community health club sessions (Lite intervention; n=50), or 20 community health club sessions (Classic intervention; n=50). Households in these villages were enrolled in 2013 for a baseline survey, then re-enrolled in 2015 for an endline survey. The primary outcome was caregiver-reported diarrhoea within the previous 7 days in children younger than 5 years. Analysis was by intention to treat and per protocol. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT01836731.FindingsAt the baseline survey undertaken between May, 2013, and August, 2013, 8734 households with children younger than 5 years of age were enrolled. At the endline survey undertaken between Sept 21, 2015, and Dec 22, 2015, 7934 (91%) of the households were re-enrolled. Among children younger than 5 years, the prevalence of caregiver-reported diarrhoea in the previous 7 days was 514 (14%) of 3616 assigned the control, 453 (14%) of 3196 allocated the Lite intervention (prevalence ratio compared with control 0·97, 95% CI 0·81-1·16; p=0·74), and 495 (14%) of 3464 assigned the Classic intervention (prevalence ratio compared with control 0·99, 0·85-1·15; p=0·87).InterpretationCommunity health clubs, in this setting in western Rwanda, had no effect on caregiver-reported diarrhoea among children younger than 5 years. Our results question the value of implementing this intervention at scale for the aim of achieving health gains.FundingBill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Project description:Over half of under-five deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and appropriate, timely, quality care is critical for saving children's lives. This study describes the context surrounding children's deaths from the time the illness was first noticed, through the care-seeking patterns leading up to the child's death, and identifies factors associated with care-seeking for these children in rural Rwanda.Secondary analysis of a verbal and social autopsy study of caregivers who reported the death of a child between March 2013 to February 2014 that occurred after discharge from the child's birth facility in southern Kayonza and Kirehe districts in Rwanda. Bivariate analyses using Fisher's exact tests were conducted to identify child, caregiver, and household factors associated with care-seeking from the formal health system (i.e., community health worker or health facility). Factors significant at ? = 0.10 significance level were considered for backwards stepwise multivariate logistic regression, stopping when remaining factors were significantly associated with care-seeking at ? = 0.05 significance level.Among the 516 eligible deaths among children under-five, 22.7% (n = 117) did not seek care from the health system. For those who did, the most common first point of contact was community health workers (45.8%). In multivariate logistic regression, higher maternal education (OR = 3.36, 95% CI: 1.89, 5.98), having diarrhea (OR = 4.21, 95%CI: 1.95, 9.07) or fever (OR = 2.03, 95%CI: 1.11, 3.72), full household insurance coverage (3.48, 95%CI: 1.79, 6.76), and longer duration of illness (OR = 22.19, 95%CI: 8.88, 55.48) were significantly associated with formal care-seeking.Interventions such as community health workers and insurance promote access to care, however a gap remains as many children had no contact with the health system prior to death and those who sought formal care still died. Further efforts are needed to respond to urgent cases in communities and further understand remaining barriers to accessing appropriate, quality care.

Project description:Promoting child wellbeing necessarily goes beyond the clinic as risks to child health and development are embedded in the social and physical environmental conditions in which children live. Pediatricians play a vital role in promoting the health of children in the communities they serve and can maximize their impact by advocating for and supporting efficacious, evidence-based strategies in their communities.To provide a succinct guide for community pediatric efforts to advance the wellbeing of all children and particularly disadvantaged children in a community, we conducted a theory-driven and structured narrative review to synthesize published systematic and meta-analytic reviews of policy-relevant, local-level strategies addressing potent and malleable influences on child health and development. An exhaustive list of policy-relevant, local-level strategies for improving child health was used to conduct a comprehensive search of recent (1990-2012), English language peer-reviewed published meta-analyses and systematic reviews in the 10 core databases of scientific literature. Our review of the literature encompassed six key conceptual domains of intervention foci, including distal influences of child health (i.e., income and resources, social cohesion, and physical environment) and proximal influences (i.e., family, school and peer). We examined intervention effects on four key domains of child health and development: cognitive development, social and emotional competence, psychological and behavioral wellbeing, and physical health.Published reviews were identified for 98 distinct policy-relevant community interventions, evaluated across 288 outcomes. We classified 46 strategies as meeting scientific criteria for efficacy by having consistent, positive outcomes from high-quality trials (e.g., tenant-based rental assistance, neighborhood watch programs, urban design and land use policies, access to quality childcare services, class size reductions, after-school programs that promote personal/social skills). Another 21 strategies were classified as having consistent evidence of positive outcomes from high-quality observational studies only, while 28 strategies had insufficient evidence available to assess their effectiveness based on published reviews. We did not limit the review to studies conducted in the United States, but the vast majority of them were U.S.-based, and the results therefore are most applicable to the U.S. context.Based on our synthesis of published literature on community development strategies, we provide an illustration combining a comprehensive set of evidence-based strategies to promote child health and development across a wide-range of child health outcomes.

Dataset Information

Community-Based Health Financing and Child Stunting in Rural Rwanda.

Publications

Community-Based Health Financing and Child Stunting in Rural Rwanda.

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