PLoS medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Two-year impact of community-based health screening and parenting groups on child development in Zambia: Follow-up to a cluster-randomized controlled trial.
Early childhood interventions have potential to offset the negative impact of early adversity. We evaluated the impact of a community-based parenting group intervention on child development in Zambia. ⋯ The results of this trial suggest that parenting groups hold promise for improving child development, particularly physical growth, in low-resource settings like Zambia.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Universal versus conditional day 3 follow-up for children with non-severe unclassified fever at the community level in Ethiopia: A cluster-randomised non-inferiority trial.
With declining malaria prevalence and improved use of malaria diagnostic tests, an increasing proportion of children seen by community health workers (CHWs) have unclassified fever. Current community management guidelines by WHO advise that children seen with non-severe unclassified fever (on day 1) should return to CHWs on day 3 for reassessment. We compared the safety of conditional follow-up reassessment only in cases where symptoms do not resolve with universal follow-up on day 3. ⋯ Conditional follow-up of children with non-severe unclassified fever in a low malaria endemic setting in Ethiopia was non-inferior to universal follow-up through day 8. Allowing CHWs to advise caregivers to bring children back only in case of continued symptoms might be a more efficient use of resources in similar settings.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Breastfeeding during infancy and neurocognitive function in adolescence: 16-year follow-up of the PROBIT cluster-randomized trial.
Evidence on the long-term effect of breastfeeding on neurocognitive development is based almost exclusively on observational studies. In the 16-year follow-up study of a large, cluster-randomized trial of a breastfeeding promotion intervention, we evaluated the long-term persistence of the neurocognitive benefits of the breastfeeding promotion intervention previously observed at early school age. ⋯ ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01561612.