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Exposure to new ideas and ways of working is important for delivering effective and creative interventions. In the rural and northern Son La province of Vietnam, HealthBridge is working with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) Son La to improve maternal health and child nutrition outcomes among ethnic minority communities. To encourage cross-pollination of ideas, a field trip was organized for a team of 18 community educators and health staff from Son La to learn about a community-based nutrition project implemented by World Vision in the neighbouring Muong Ang district of Dien Bien province.
During the trip, the team observed household consultations with mothers and the functioning of nutrition clubs held for child caregivers. They learned about how the clubs have been set up and how they are managed. Ms. Van, a health worker, shared:
“I was impressed with the confidence of the club facilitator. She used interactive ways to deliver the club meeting such as using drawings to illustrate typical symptoms of [childhood illnesses like] diarrhoea, flu, or fever. I think I can apply this technique in organizing [my own] nutrition education sessions”.
Talking about a household visit, Mr. Lang, a community educator said:
“I found the combination of providing nutrition advice for mothers and conducting observations of the household’s hygienic conditions useful. Also, the way village health workers discuss with mothers a nutrition plan to carry out and follow up with nutrition advice is interesting. I learned that each household will receive up to 11 visits at different points from conception to the child reaching two years of age”.
The team also agreed that integrating other topics of interest to the local community in the nutrition clubs is useful to maintain the interest of club members and diversify the club activities. Other topics include smallholder agriculture, livelihood and small livestock raising, which all can contribute to the overall goal of reducing child malnutrition.
After the field trip, the team debriefed with the Muong Ang district health center staff and World Vision staff, sharing about our own approach to delivering nutrition education sessions, cooking demonstrations, and sexual & reproductive health education through groups of travelling community educators who visit local villages. This sharing of approaches between organizations allows implementing teams to learn from each other, share ideas and better understand what works well within communities to improve health outcomes. The vice director of the CDC Son La, Ms. Phuc, reflected that the trip was useful because both teams gained insight into establishing community-based interventions to improve nutrition and food security. Such learnings from other projects and exchanges of ideas will strengthen future interventions.
