Can Person-Centered Interactions with Community Health Care Workers Improve Women’s Breastfeeding and Infant Feeding Practices in India?
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Dilys Walker; Purnima Menon; Sumeet Patil; Lakshmi Gopalakrishnan; Sneha Nimmagadda; Nadia Diamond-Smith
- Source
- Curr Dev Nutr
- Subject
- Maternal, Perinatal and Pediatric Nutrition
Pregnancy
medicine.medical_specialty
Nutrition and Dietetics
business.industry
Breastfeeding
Medicine (miscellaneous)
Person centered
medicine.disease
Community health care
Family medicine
medicine
Community health workers
business
Infant feeding
Breast feeding
Postpartum period
Food Science
- Language
- ISSN
- 2475-2991
OBJECTIVES: Breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices in India do not meet recommendations. Community health care workers (CHWs) are often the primary source of information for pregnant and postpartum women about Infant and Young child Feeding (IYCF) practices. While existing research has evaluated the effectiveness of content and delivery of information through CHWs, little is known about person-centric soft-skills in interpersonal communication. We analyzed the effect of high quality person-centered interactions based on respect and trust on recommended IYCF practices. METHODS: We use data from evaluation of an at-scale mHealth intervention in India that serves as a job aid to the CHWs and as a monitoring tool for their supervisors (N = 6635 mothers of children