Young Researcher Workshop

Family Engagement and Child Nutrition Intervention: Effects on Caregiving Practices and Child Wellbeing in Rural China

Speaker: Yunwei Chen, Ph.D. Candidate in Health Policy and Management at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Child health interventions in low-resource settings often focus on addressing the knowledge gaps of mothers or primary caregivers. However, family members may exert negative influences on the adoption of optimal household health behaviors and compromise the effectiveness of interventions and policies. We implemented a field experiment in rural China, which randomized the participation of key family influencers in a home-visiting early-life nutritional intervention. In this intervention, community health workers provided stage-based health and nutritional education to mothers and caregivers of young children through home visits with the assistance of a tablet-based mHealth system. Half of the treatment group was randomized to target only primary caregivers while the other half engaged both primary and secondary caregivers. In this talk, I will present preliminary results on whether the intervention that engaged key influencers was more effective in changing household behavior and promoting optimal feeding practices for infants and young children than the primary caregiver-only intervention.

About the Workshops

The SCCEI Young Researcher Workshops are a bi-weekly series of presentations from scholars around campus who are working on issues related to China’s economy and institutions. The aim of the series is to bring together young scholars by providing a platform to present new research, get feedback, exchange ideas, and make connections. Each session features a single presenter who may present a new research plan, share results from preliminary data analyses, or do a trial run of a job talk or conference presentation. The Workshop Series is an opportunity to give and receive feedback on existing research, get to know other researchers around campus who are working on or in China, and be a testing ground for new ideas, data, and presentations.

Workshops are held every other Thursday from 1 - 2 pm. Afternoon refreshments will be provided! 

Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present.