Evaluation of a Community Health Worker Home Visit Intervention to Improve Child Development in South Africa: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial

一个

Main findings:

• At the end of the first year of the intervention period, 43 percent of CHWs adhered to monthly home visits. 
• The home visit intervention had no significant impact on children’s height-for-age scores, growth stunting, motor skills, language skills or social-emotional skills.
• The children in the intervention group did see significant improvements in saccadic reaction time (SRT), an eye-tracking measure of visual processing speed. 
• However, while the effect on SRT was observed during the first two lab assessments, it was no longer present at the third assessment, which took place after the intervention had ended.

The authors note that the study had important limitations. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they were not able to assess outcomes until one year after the intervention period had ended and also were not able to thoroughly document key aspects of implementation. Nevertheless, the study contributes to a growing literature documenting the positive effects of home visit interventions on child development in LMICs. The study also demonstrates the feasibility of collecting markers of neural function like SRT in low-resource settings.