Healthy Baby Healthy Mother Toolkit

The high burden of undernutrition through the critical first 1,000 days persists in Ethiopia. Studies have indicated that approximately 1 in 4 women of reproductive age in Ethiopia are underweight, 17% of babies are born at low birth weight and nearly 50% of children are stunted by age 2. Inadequate diets of pregnant and breastfeeding women, both suboptimal quality and quantity, are a key contributor to maternal and infant undernutrition in Ethiopia. The National Nutrition Strategy of Ethiopia, adopted in 2008, recommends one additional meal per day to support healthy pregnancy, and two extra meals per day to support lactation (US Agency for International Development (USAID), 2008). Using the Health Belief Model for behavior change, the study team developed and has tested in other contexts a Healthy Baby Toolkit (HBT) designed to serve as a cue to action to improve maternal and family self-efficacy in providing mothers and their babies with adequate nutrition. The toolkit has previously been tested in India, Kenya, Malawi, and Ethiopia where it has demonstrated acceptability and feasibility, and demonstrated improvement in the diets of children between 6-23 months. This new trial aims to understand the added health benefits of introducing the toolkit to mothers during pregnancy and the early postpartum period when crucial child growth and development trajectories are established. The study will evaluate the benefits of HBT on maternal nutrition and infant growth, especially during the first 500 days (pregnancy and first 6 months of life). It will also assess strategies for facility and community-based delivery of the toolkit for future rollout and scaling up. Findings from this study will create an evidence base for effective counseling strategies and support advocacy efforts to integrate the toolkit into routine nutrition education and counseling programs in Ethiopia.