Evaluation of health intervention: a case of preschool children in Egypt

Abstract

“Good health and well-being” is the third of the Sustainable Development Goals, but it cannot be achieved without achieving goal two, “No Hunger.” Nutrition status is the foundation for healthy individuals, especially children. Developing countries have to set policies to solve malnutrition in order to ensure better health and well-being. This led the researchers to evaluate the impact of nutrition intervention on health outcomes in preschool children in Egypt, a lower middle-income country with high levels of poverty, food insecurity, and anemia. The prevalence of anemia represents a major public health problem in the country; reaching 39.6%.The analysis is based on a control randomized design to measure the impact of nutrition intervention. The sample of this study consisted of 405 children across seven kindergarten classes in Egypt. The results of the study did not show a significant improvement in rates of anemia, stunting, and obesity, likely due to the short treatment period. The results of this research are expected to provide important insights for policy implications under the assumption that this may be a vital step in the process of improving children’s health and school performance. Moreover, the results were inspiring enough that this randomized control trial research design has been applied to another study, using a longer-period nutrition program with a larger sample size that will measure the impact of nutrition interventions on children’s health and cognition as reflected in the children’s school performance and later in their productivity in the labor market.