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Home » What We Do » Food And Nutrition » Soils, Food and Healthy Communities Project
Soils, Food and Healthy Communities Project
IMPROVING THE LINKAGE BETWEEN LEGUME-
Introduction
The Soils, Food & Healthy Communities project (SFHC) has been running in Ekwendeni, Malawi since 2000. It is led by Dr. Rachel Bezner Kerr. Through participatory research, SFHC tests legume systems and uses an ecosystem approach to understanding linkages between food security and health.
HealthBridge has been providing technical support to the project since 2001.
In a first phase of the SFHC project (2001-
Objectives
The overall goal was to improve child nutrition and make household food as safe as
possible for resource-
Results
Numerous research results have come out of this research, including research on experimental agriculture, social relations, and child health (see publication list at http://geography.uwo.ca/faculty/beznerkerrr/).
For the research with which HealthBridge was involved, the most important results may be summarized as:
- Unhealthy child feeding practices, in particular, early introduction of porridge into the child's diet, are associated with poorer child growth, reflecting poorer child health (see page 90 at http://www.unu.edu/unupress/food/FNBv28n1_regular_Final.pdf ).
- The intervention was effective in improving child growth, reflecting improved child health, especially in those villages which have participated for the longest time and have been involved most intensely.
Recommendations
- In brief, to promote change in behaviour it is essential to understand who has the
power to make the changes. In the case of child feeding, it is often not the mothers
who decide when to introduce foods to their child, but rather their mother-
in- laws. Mothers- in- law must be targeted in child feeding interventions. - Ecohealth approaches to development and research have many benefits (engage and empower
communities, fuller model complexity of ecosystem, higher likelihood of sustainable
impacts), but they can take years of intense effort for impact to be observed. But
because the impacts are sustainable and help address the underlying problems (in
the SFHC case, low soil fertility and inappropriate child feeding) the effort should
be considered cost-
effective and worthwhile.
Project profile
Lead organizations: University of Western Ontario and the Primary Health Care Department, Ekwendeni CCAP Hospital
Location: Ekwendeni, Malawi
Donors: International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canadian FoodGrains Bank
Duration: 2004 -
Reports and Resources