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Effectiveness of the baby-friendly community initiative in promoting exclusive breastfeeding among HIV negative and positive mothers: a randomized controlled trial in Koibatek Sub-County, Baringo, Kenya

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posted on 2020-08-03, 15:56 authored by Betty Mogesi Samburu, Sera Lewise Young, Frederick Murunga Wekesah, Milkah Njeri Wanjohi, Judith Kimiywe, Peter Muriuki, Paula GriffithsPaula Griffiths, Stephen T. McGarvey, Nyovani Janet Madise, Elizabeth W. Kimani-Murage
BACKGROUND: Although the baby-friendly community initiative (BFCI) has been proposed as a community-level approach to improve infant feeding practices, there is little data on its variation in effectiveness by HIV status. We conducted a study to determine the effectiveness of BFCI in changing knowledge and attitudes towards exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) and increasing the rates among HIV negative and HIV positive women in rural Kenya. METHODS: A community-based cluster-randomized controlled trial was implemented from April 2015 to December 2016 among 901 women enrolled across 13 clusters. The intervention groups received a minimum of 12 personalized home-based counselling sessions on infant feeding by trained community health volunteers from their first or second trimester of pregnancy until 6 months postpartum. Other interventions included education sessions at maternal child clinics, mother-to-mother support group meetings and bi-monthly baby-friendly gatherings targeting influencers. The control group received standard health education at the facility and during monthly routine home visits by community health volunteers not trained on BFCI. Primary outcome measures were the rates of EBF at week 1, months 2, 4 and 6 postpartum. Secondary outcomes included knowledge and attitudes regarding breastfeeding for HIV-exposed infants. Statistical methods included analysis of covariance and logistic regression. RESULTS: At 6 months, EBF rates among HIV negative mothers were significantly higher in the BFCI intervention arm compared to the control arm (81.7% versus 42.2% p = 0.001). HIV positive mothers in the intervention arm had higher EBF rates at 6 months than the control but the difference was not statistically significant (81.8% versus 58.4%; p = 0.504). In HIV negative group, there was greater knowledge regarding EBF for HIV-exposed infants in the intervention arm than in the control (92.1% versus 60.7% p = 0.001). Among HIV positive mothers, such knowledge was high among both the intervention and control groups (96% versus 100%, p > 0.1). HIV negative and positive mothers in the intervention arm had more favourable attitudes regarding EBF for HIV-exposed infants than the control (84.5% versus 62.1%, p = 0.001) and (94.6% versus 53.8% to p = 0.001) respectively. CONCLUSIONS: BFCI interventions can complement facility-based interventions to improve exclusive and continued breastfeeding knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours among HIV negative and positive women.

Funding

This study was funded by the NIH and the USAID through the Partnership for Enhanced Engagement in Research (PEER) Health Program, administered by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to Kenyatta University and the African Population and Health Research Center (Grant # PGA2000003677/8). EWK-M was a Wellcome Trust Fellow during the conceptualization and design of the study and initial data collection, Grant # 097146/Z/11/Z, and is currently a Wellcome Trust International Engagement Fellow Grant # 208791/Z/17/Z. PG was supported by a British Academy mid-career fellowship during the conduct of the study (Ref: MD120048).

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

International Breastfeeding Journal

Volume

15

Issue

1

Publisher

BioMed Central

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Acceptance date

2020-06-07

Publication date

2020-07-14

Copyright date

2020

eISSN

1746-4358

Language

  • en

Depositor

Prof Paula Griffiths. Deposit date: 3 August 2020

Article number

62

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