Behaviour change communication to improve complementary feeding practices in Ethiopia: Couples' beliefs concerning paternal involvement in childcare.

An important cause of stunting is limited consumption of complementary foods, in terms of both quantities and nutrients. Although existing studies show a positive association between fathers' engagement and children's diet, programmes designed to improve complementary feeding practices often only target mothers. In response to this, maternal behaviour change communication (BCC), paternal BCC and food voucher programmes were designed and implemented in Ethiopia using a clustered randomized controlled trial design. The paternal BCC programme included gender-equal messages to increase fathers' participation in childcare, household labour and decision making. The research reported in this paper is an examination of the BCC programmes, characterizing the behavioural, normative and control beliefs of both mothers and fathers in BCC households compared to those in control households. In this study, a total of 40 participants were included, with 13 mother-father pairs in the BCC + food voucher group, and seven pairs in the control group. Each participant was interviewed separately. We found that BCC mothers showed more gender-equal tendencies than the control mothers despite being more rural in location. By contrast, the beliefs of BCC and control fathers were similar overall, suggesting men are more resistant to gender-equal BCC. More work is needed to develop and test effective methods for changing fathers' beliefs and practices.

Engaging Fathers Through Nutrition Behavior Communication Change Does Not Increase Child Dietary Diversity in a Cluster Randomized Control Trial in Rural Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND: Adding food vouchers or paternal nutrition behavior change communication (BCC) activities to maternal BCC may improve child diets and household food security but their effect is unknown. OBJECTIVES: We assessed whether maternal BCC, maternal and paternal BCC, maternal BCC and a food voucher, or maternal and paternal BCC and a food voucher improved nutrition knowledge, child diet diversity scores (CDDS), and household food security. METHODS: We implemented a cluster randomized control trial in 92 Ethiopian villages. Treatments were as follows: maternal (M) BCC only; maternal BCC and paternal BCC (M+P); maternal BCC and food vouchers (M+V); and maternal BCC, food vouchers, and paternal BCC (M+V+P). Effects were assessed using generalized estimating equations. RESULTS: Maternal BCC and paternal BCC increased the maternal and paternal knowledge of optimal infant and young child feeding practices by 4.2-6.8 percentage points (P < 0.05) and by 8.3-8.4 percentage points (P < 0.01), respectively. Combining maternal BCC with either paternal BCC or the food voucher increased CDDS by 21.0%-23.1% (P < 0.05). The treatments M, M+V, and M+P increased the proportion of children who met minimum acceptable diet standards by 14.5, 12.8, and 20.1 percentage points, respectively (P < 0.01). Adding paternal BCC to the maternal BCC treatment or to the maternal BCC and voucher treatment did not lead to a larger increase in CDDS. CONCLUSIONS: Increased paternal involvement does not necessarily translate into improvements in child feeding outcomes. Understanding the intrahousehold decision-making dynamics that underlie this is an important area for future research. This study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT03229629.

The Roles of Nutrition Education and Food Vouchers in Improving Child Nutrition: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Ethiopia.

Mothers' lack of knowledge about child nutrition and limited resources lead to poor diets among children in developing countries, increasing their risk of chronic undernutrition. We implemented a cluster randomized control trial that randomly provides four-month-long Behavior Change Communication (BCC) and food vouchers in Ethiopia. We find improvements in child-feeding practices and a reduction in chronic child undernutrition only when BCC and vouchers are provided together. BCC or voucher alone had limited impacts. Our results highlight the importance of adding an effective educational component to existing transfer programs.

Phase control of quasi-2D perovskites and improved light-emitting performance by excess organic cations and nanoparticle intercalation.

The optoelectronic properties of quasi-two-dimensional organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites can be tuned by controlling the formation of Ruddlesden-Popper type phases, which enables diverse device applications such as photovoltaics and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Herein, the influence of excess organic cations on the phase formation of (PEA)2MAn-1PbnBr3n+1 is systematically investigated with various mixing ratios to discover the phase distribution beneficial for light-emitting diodes. It is found that PEA cations exceeding Pb ions in molar ratio are required to produce small-n phases in the films with a strong photoluminescence, while excess MA cations enable the formation of more large-n phases. Low electrical conductivity inherent to the properties of quasi-2D perovskites is further lowered by the introduction of excess organic cations. This is overcome by the intercalation of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles (NPs) into the blocking layers composed of PEA cations. Importantly, these metal oxide NPs also modulate the phase distribution, enabling the realization of bright green quasi-2D perovskites with a better stability and a maximum luminance of nearly 60 000 cd m-2, which is the highest brightness compared to the so far reported quasi-2D perovskite LEDs incorporating organic cations.