Prevention of MAM through Ag/Food Security, Social Protection/ECD and WASH

Dear Audrey, Your study looks very interesting. I have a little bit similar experience of implementing such approach in two areas in Ethiopia. my question is handling of the control arms. As per Your study protocol, the intervention group will received cash transfer whereas the control arm get nothing. in this case, how do you get ethical approval? the other point is, how do you manage if any partner wants to implement any livelihood based program in the control arm?

Dear Audrey, Your study looks very interesting. even if the aim and setup was different, I have similar experience of implementing such approach. As per your study protocol, the intervention group will received unconditional cash transfer whereas the control arm get nothing. During the course of the intervention, you are expected to collect anthropometry, dietary diversity and other related data from both arms. In this case, how do you get ethical approval? the other point is, how will you manage if any partner wants to implement any livelihood based program in the control arm?

Dear Kiross, Thanks for your interest in our study. We received approval for this study from two independent ethics committees. Having a control group was not considered as a big issue in our case, as this is a preventive program and not a curative one. Moreover, both groups benefit from a regular follow up of children and each time a child is detected as acute malnourished, he is sent to the nearest health center and managed. Besides, the study is not “against” the implementation of other programs in the area, but we try to document all the external intervention in both groups. In this purpose, we communicate a lot at the local and regional levels on our project and asked organizations to inform us if they implement new programs in our area of intervention, so that we can take them into account when analyzing the data. I hope this can help.

Dear Audrey, Thanks for your clarification.