Cluster Randomised Trial in Ethiopia: Update 1.0, November 2020

We are a consortium of two universities - Jimma University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine a technical charity - the Emergency Nutrition Network, and an international humanitarian response agency -GOAL, working collaboratively to fulfil a vision that "Every infant aged under 6 months, at every healthcare or community-level contact point is nutritionally assessed and appropriately supported to survive and thrive".

The ultimate goal of this research is to effect national and international policy guidance change to ensure access to community-based care for at risk infants and their mothers. Central to this is generating high quality evidence on an intervention that is feasible, effective, scalable and sustainable.

The MAMI Care Pathway is an integrated care approach that leverages existing health systems and services to manage nutritionally at risk mothers and infants under six months of age (MAMI). Our research will test if community-based management using the MAMI Care Pathway improve the growth of nutritionally at-risk infants under 6 months using a cluster randomised control trial design.

Our study, generously funded by the Eleanor Crook Foundation with a 4-year grant, is expected to be completed by the summer of 2023, and will be implemented in health centres in Jimma Zone and Deder Woreda.

At the heart of this research are partnerships at sub-national, national and international levels to truly co-create an integrated intervention that has real potential for scale. To ensure this research generates relevant national evidence, we have and will continue to build multi-level representation and engagement in Ethiopia throughout the research process from early planning stages.