Clinical Trials Logo

Clinical Trial Summary

An estimated 43% of children under age 5 in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) experience compromised development due to poverty, poor nutrition, and inadequate psychosocial stimulation. Numerous early childhood development (ECD) parenting interventions have been shown to be effective at improving ECD outcomes, at least in the short-term, but they are a) still too expensive to implement at scale in low-resource and rural settings, and b) their early impacts tend to fade over time in the absence of continued support. New ways to deliver effective ECD parenting interventions are sorely needed that are both low-cost to be potentially scalable, while also able to sustain impacts long-term. The rapid growth and low cost of mobile communications in LMIC settings presents a potentially promising solution to the competing problems of scalability and sustainability. Yet there is no rigorous research on mobile-health (mHealth) interventions for ECD outcomes in LMIC settings. Study investigators recently showed that an 8-month ECD parenting intervention featuring fortnightly group meetings delivered by Community Health Workers (CHWs) from Kenya's rural health care system significantly improved child cognitive, language, and socioemotional development as well as parenting practices, and a group-based delivery model was more cost-effective than previous ECD interventions. Yet it is still too expensive for scaling in a rural LMIC setting such as rural Kenya, particularly if interventions are needed that can be extended for longer periods of time to increase their ability to sustain impacts. This study will experimentally test a traditional in-person group-based delivery model for an ECD parenting intervention against an mHealth-based delivery model that partially substitutes remote delivery for in-person group meetings. The relative effectiveness and costs of this hybrid-delivery model will be assessed against a purely in-person group model, and the interventions will extend over two years to increase their ability to sustain changes in child outcomes longer-term. The evaluation design is a clustered Randomized Control Trial across 90 CHWs and their associated villages and 1200 households. The central hypothesis is that a hybrid ECD intervention will be lower cost, but remote delivery may be an inferior substitute for in-person visits, leaving open the question of the most cost-effective program.


Clinical Trial Description

n/a


Study Design


Related Conditions & MeSH terms


NCT number NCT06140017
Study type Interventional
Source University of Southern California
Contact Italo Lopez Garcia, PhD
Phone 12137641564
Email italolop@usc.edu
Status Recruiting
Phase N/A
Start date October 24, 2023
Completion date December 15, 2025

See also
  Status Clinical Trial Phase
Completed NCT06315036 - Effects of Developmental Gymnastics on Preschoolers' Motor Skills N/A
Active, not recruiting NCT05143294 - Conectar Jugando: Board Games in Elementary Classrooms (6-12 Years Old) to Improve Executive Functions N/A
Completed NCT05267730 - Conectar Jugando: Board Games in Rural Elementary Classrooms (6-12 Years Old) to Improve Executive Functions N/A
Completed NCT03680157 - Comparing Rater Reliability of Familiar Practitioners to Blinded Coders
Completed NCT00362076 - The Role of Motion in Infants' Ability to Categorize N/A
Recruiting NCT05525962 - Vulnerability/Resilience Factors Influencing the Developmental Trajectories and Adaptive Methods of Children and Adolescents in Child Welfare System.
Completed NCT03232606 - Physical Activity of Asthmatic Children
Completed NCT05955755 - The Effect of Butterfly Vacuum Blood Collection Set and Standard Vacutanier Needle on the Level of Pain and Fear N/A
Recruiting NCT04443855 - WASH Benefits Child Development Follow up N/A
Not yet recruiting NCT06335524 - Infant-Maternal Partnership and Cognitive Training Study for Preterm Infants N/A
Not yet recruiting NCT05783141 - Prebiotic Effects in Healthy Toddlers N/A
Completed NCT02539251 - Arabic Ages and Stages Questionnaire-III
Completed NCT02800616 - The Healthy Elementary School of the Future N/A
Completed NCT02451059 - Reducing Socioeconomic Disparities in Health at Pediatric Visits N/A
Completed NCT02242539 - Tools to Improve Parental Recognition of Developmental Deficits in Children N/A
Completed NCT03010306 - CASITA Intervention for Children at Risk of Delay in Carabayllo, Peru N/A
Completed NCT01683565 - Preemie Tots: A Pilot Study to Understand the Effects of Prematurity in Toddlerhood Phase 4
Completed NCT00989859 - Photo-Plethysmographic Camera to Monitor Heart Rate, Respiration Rate and Oxygen Saturation in Infants
Recruiting NCT00980733 - Efficacy of Micronutrient Fortified Yoghurt in School Children for Health Benefits Phase 3
Terminated NCT04347707 - Building Regulation in Dual Generations N/A