February 2017 – This study published in the Journal of Nutrition provides the results of a cluster-randomized program evaluation of Alive & Thrive in Vietnam. Alive & Thrive applied principles of social franchising within the government health system in Vietnam to improve the quality of interpersonal counseling for infant and young child feeding combined with a national mass media campaign and community mobilization.
The results found that the intervention significantly improved complementary feeding practices, but not child growth, among mothers who used counseling services at least once. A greater impact may be achieved with strategies designed to increase service utilization.