Scaling up healthy nutrition intervention in adolescents and pregnancy

Approach

The project aims at providing access to nutritional education to all students attending secondary school in Cameroon and to all pregnant women visiting health facilities by scaling up nutritional interventions developed through project WDF16-1434 and by introducing systematic nutritional education in ANC facilities. In addition, interventions making it easier for local communities to adopt healthy behaviours (i.e., going beyond simply educating communities) will be developed by mayors and local representatives in 8 selected councils.

At national level:

1) Advocacy and partnership building:

Create high-level buy-in for the enactment and enforcement of laws/regulations conducive to a healthy environment.
Build a consortium of key stakeholders in the field of nutrition and health promotion (follow-up to the process initiated under P2P support) to change the narrative from undernutrition to all forms of malnutrition (≈ 30% of Cameroonians are overweight or obese).
2) Capacity building:

Training of national school inspectors as trainers in nutritional education; commitment from MoE to pursue capacity building in each region; online dissemination and introduction of nutrition curriculum into the Ministry’s distance learning platform.
Training of HCPs as trainers in healthy pregnancy & first 1,000 days; advocacy to introduce nutritional education in routine ANC.
In 8 local councils to be selected with FEICOM:

Support mayors to develop, with community representatives, locally acceptable and sustainable interventions promoting healthy living in their municipalities (e.g., creation of community gardens, tax incentives for vegetable vendors, etc.).
Training of teachers and nurses to deliver nutritional education and training of school food vendors in healthy cooking.
Roll out of comprehensive interventions designed by each participating school (e.g., provision of physical activity kits, water points for school canteens, creation of health clubs…).
Training of HCPs to deliver nutritional education to pregnant women attending ANC clinics and to monitor women with HIP.
Outcome measurement:

Strong setup to measure selected outcomes in targeted municipalities comparing supervised, non-supervised councils with councils with no intervention.

Expected results

6 high-level advocacy meetings to promote heathy lifestyles
80% of MoE inspectors trained as trainers in nutritional education
120 HCPs (doctors, nurses and midwives) trained as trainers in healthy pregnancy and healthy first 1,000 days
8 local councils supported to develop and implement health promotion interventions in their communities
400 teachers and 160 school nursers from these 8 councils trained in nutritional education; 400 food vendors trained in healthy cooking
24 schools (3 in each council) rolling out their own interventions to promote healthy living (going beyond training children in healthy living)
2,000 pregnant women trained in healthy pregnancy and 1,200 women monitored post-partum
Baseline and endline conducted to measure both individual and institutional outcomes (e.g., change in health literacy skills in children, change in availability/accessibility of healthy food options in councils)