Clinical Trials Logo

Clinical Trial Summary

Globally, childhood malnutrition remains a public health concern. Malnutrition can be diverse from undernutrition to overnutrition. A young child, primarily refers to those under the age of 5, is suffering from undernutrition when the child is lacking of adequate nutrition that necessary for proper growth and health due to direct or indirect causes such as not having enough food. In fully urbanized area such as Kuala Lumpur, urban poor children tend to face greater deprivations such as lower education and poor health which significantly influence their daily diet and nutritional status. Hence, urban poor children who are living and growing up in such underprivileged environment should not be neglected. Since young children are generally depending on maternal feeding for daily diet, intervention that focus on encouraging positive change in maternal feeding practices might be efficient in reducing childhood undernutrition. The positive deviance (PD) approach may consider as a better alternative to empower mothers by promoting new behaviour to feed their children. Hence, this study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a nutrition program using PD approach in reducing undernutrition among urban poor children aged 3 to 5 years old in Kuala Lumpur.


Clinical Trial Description

Background: Undernourished children who fail to grow in height and weight as other normal children can be underweight, stunting or wasting. In fully urbanized area such as Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, the consequences of undernutrition are more detrimental in urban poor young children. Since young children are generally depending on maternal feeding for daily diet, alternative intervention that focus on encouraging positive change in maternal behaviour when feeding children might be efficient in reducing childhood undernutrition. The positive deviance (PD) approach is one such alternative intervention. This approach emphases the identification of positive deviant, individuals who successfully discover a way to solve a problem by performing some uncommon but advantageous actions or behaviours in the same underprivileged environment as their peers. In the context of child nutrition, positive deviance is more frequently referred to as adaptive child care practices, positive hygiene practices and feeding practices that enable children to develop appropriately in a harsh environment with limited resources. The nutrition program developed using this approach helps to discover positive deviant, spread local wisdom from mothers of well-nourished children to mothers of undernourished children, and initiate positive behavioural change as a preliminary step to promote healthy weight gain in children. Methods: This is a mixed method study which will be carried out in two phases. Phase I of the study will involve focus group discussion (FGD) with semi-structured interview to explore maternal feeding practices and also foods being fed to children. Mothers of children aged 3 to 5 years old will be recruited through purposive sampling or until saturation point is reached. Phase II of the study will involve a two-armed randomized controlled trial to evaluate effectiveness of nutrition program. A total of 164 mother-child dyads will be recruited, in which 82 of them will be recruited separately and randomly from different PPR flats with 1:1 allocation to form intervention and comparison groups. Ethical approval will be obtained from the Ethics Committee for Research Involving Human Subjects Universiti Putra Malaysia (JKEUPM). Permission to conduct this study in PPR flats and the list of PPR flats in KL will be obtained from the Kuala Lumpur City Hall. Intervention group will need to participate in a nutrition program for 3 months that consists of education session with peer-led cooking session and rehabilitation session. The comparison group will be given all the materials used in the program for reference after the last data collection. The height and weight of children will be measured by researcher. Mothers will be interviewed on the dietary intake of their children. Mothers will also need to answer a Malay language self-administered questionnaire to obtain information on socio-demographic characteristics, nutrition knowledge and food security status. These measurements will be taken at the baseline (before intervention), immediate post-intervention and 3-month post-intervention for both intervention and comparison groups. ;


Study Design


Related Conditions & MeSH terms


NCT number NCT04688515
Study type Interventional
Source Universiti Putra Malaysia
Contact
Status Completed
Phase N/A
Start date March 9, 2022
Completion date March 10, 2024

See also
  Status Clinical Trial Phase
Completed NCT05012592 - Reducing Malnutrition and Helminthic Infectious Disease Among Primary School Children by the School Nurses N/A
Completed NCT04216043 - Milk Matters in Malnutrition, is it the Lactose or Dairy Protein? N/A
Enrolling by invitation NCT05603793 - YoUng Adolescents' behaViour, musculoskeletAl heAlth, Growth & Nutrition
Completed NCT03573713 - Decreasing Stunting by Reducing Maternal Depression in Uganda: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial (CRCT) for Improved Nutrition Outcomes N/A
Not yet recruiting NCT05792514 - The Reliable Nutritional Risk Screening Tools
Recruiting NCT04109352 - Labelled Carbon Sucrose Breath Test (13C-SBT) as a Marker of Environmental Enteropathy
Enrolling by invitation NCT03355313 - Use of Low-level Laser Therapy on Children Aged One to Five Years With Energy-protein Malnutrition N/A
Completed NCT05551819 - Acceptability of a Microbiome-directed Food in Young Children With Acute Malnutrition N/A
Completed NCT04101487 - Cash Transfers to Increase Dietary Diversity in Grand Gedeh County, Liberia N/A
Active, not recruiting NCT05571280 - Community-based, Controlled, Open-label, Cluster-randomized Trial for the Reduction of Chronic Malnutrition in Children Under Two Years of Age, With Three Intervention Arms Grouped by Clusters, in Two Provinces in Southern Angola, Huíla and Cunene. N/A
Withdrawn NCT05437068 - Nutritional Supplementation in Children at Risk of Undernutrition N/A
Recruiting NCT05442424 - Keiki (Pediatric) Produce Prescription (KPRx) Program Hawaii N/A
Completed NCT03454100 - Community Resilience to Acute Malnutrition N/A
Completed NCT04896996 - The Effect of Continuous Egg Supplement on Personalized Nutri-omics in Primary School Children (SI-EGG STUDY) N/A
Not yet recruiting NCT06049680 - Safety Study of SMOFlipid to Evaluate the Risk of Developing EFAD and/or PNAC in Pediatric and Adult Patients Phase 4
Recruiting NCT06382857 - Effectiveness of a Microbiome-directed Food to Promote Programmatic and Sustained Nutritional Recovery Among Children With Uncomplicated Acute Malnutrition N/A
Recruiting NCT05269992 - Childrens Real Food Tolerance Study N/A
Active, not recruiting NCT05123378 - Liberia National Community Health Assistant (NCHA) Program and Under-five Mortality N/A
Not yet recruiting NCT04810468 - Study of Malnutrition in Primary School Children N/A
Completed NCT04334538 - Effect of an Alternative RUTF on Intestinal Permeability in Children With Severe Acute Malnutrition N/A