Mobile Health (mHealth) Tools to Improve Delivery Quality of a Family Home Visiting Intervention

The Family Strengthening Intervention for Early Childhood Development (FSI-ECD) is an evidence-based home-visiting behavioral intervention for vulnerable families with children aged 6-36 months. The FSI-ECD targets improving parental emotion regulation and parent-child interactions to improve parental mental health and child development outcomes and reduce family violence. FSI-ECD compromises five core components delivered in 12 modules delivered in weekly sessions via active coaching by community health workers. Core components include coaching on: a) nutrition, health and hygiene; b) early stimulation and playful parenting; c) building resilience and coping skills; d) building problem-solving skills; and d) building emotion regulation and conflict resolution skills.

Standard CHW care involves three home visiting sessions delivered to families following childbirth with weekly supervision via phone or face-to-face. Topics of home visiting sessions include: skilled post-natal care for mothers, early initiation of breastfeeding and exclusive breastfeeding practices, adequate nutrition, immunization services and timely use of these services, hand washing and hygiene practices (including waste disposal and food hygiene), building the capacity of family members to appropriately take care of newborns and children under age 5, and building the capacity of family members to recognize and act on postnatal danger signs for newborns, mothers, and children under 5. CHWs also conduct screenings for acute malnutrition and growth monitoring to identify early referrals, and they can provide family planning methods, deworming tablets and other vitamins for acute malnutrition, dehydration, and anti-malaria treatment. Each home-visiting session lasts about 60 minutes.