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2-154 - Cost-effective and Scalable Early Childhood Interventions in LMICs: Evidence from Chile, Kenya, India, and Madagascar.

Fri, March 22, 1:00 to 2:30pm, Hilton Baltimore, Floor: Level 2, Key 9

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

There exists strong evidence that children’s traits measured early in life are strong predictors of their long-term health and human capital outcomes as adults. Yet more than 40% of children under five in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) experience compromised cognitive and psychosocial development. Early childhood development (ECD) interventions that integrate improved nutrition practices and child stimulation activities have been proven to improve child development in the short-term. However, key questions remain relating to 1) how to maximize the reach and cost-effectiveness of ECD interventions; 2) what pathways connect interventions to changes in parental behaviors and child outcomes, and 3) how to sustain impacts long-term.

This proposed symposium aims to shed light on these questions by reviewing the experiences of four early childhood interventions implemented in Chile, Kenya, India and Madagascar. Common features of these studies include: 1) they all aimed to improve parental behaviors as the primary mediating channel for achieving child impacts; 2) they all combine parental nutrition and psychosocial stimulation strategies in their curriculum; 3) they target very young children (focus on 0-3 age group); and 4) all were evaluated using randomized control trial methodologies. However, key differences in the curriculum design, duration and intensity of the interventions (ranging from 3 months to 2 years), models of delivery (home visits, group meetings, center-based meetings and mixed models), and results across studies promise an invigorating discussion of what we can collectively learn to help inform how to design cost-effective interventions at scale in LMIC settings.

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