Though there is a wide array of evidence that women's empowerment is associated with more positive health and nutritional outcomes for women and children, evidence around the relationship with mental health or subjective well-being remains relatively limited. The objective of this paper is to explore this relationship in longitudinal data from rural Burkina Faso.We analyze the association between empowerment measured using the project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI), and two additional outcomes of interest: stress (measured using the SRQ-20) and maternal depression (measured using the Edinburgh scale for post-partum depression). The analysis employs both cross-sectional specifications and panel specifications conditional on individual fixed effects.We find evidence of substantial negative correlations between the empowerment score and maternal stress and depression measured using both continuous and binary variables. This relationship seems to be particularly driven by self-efficacy and respect among household members, where higher scores have negative associations with depression and stress that are both large in magnitude and precisely estimated.Enhanced mental health may be another channel for a positive effect of empowerment on women's welfare. 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmmh.2022.100160

Women's empowerment, maternal depression, and stress: Evidence from rural Burkina Faso

Introduction Malnutrition is a significant challenge to the health of women and children in Burkina Faso. Given the critical role of animal source food on the health of infants and young children (IYC), interventions continue to explore the potential for eggs to prevent malnutrition. Methods Using data from the Un Oeuf intervention, which significantly increased IYC egg consumption, combined with quantitative and qualitative data from endline and 3-month follow-up, we explore the barriers and facilitating factors to IYC egg consumption and the sustainability and scalability of the intervention. Results Child egg consumption was high at follow-up in the Control, Partial, and Full Intervention arms (83.3, 88.2%, and 100, respectively). The Full Intervention arm had the highest mean number of eggs consumed (2.9, 2.6, and 5.7), which reflected a slight reduction from endline (6.2). All participants owned chickens at follow-up (100%), however, flock size varied. The Full Intervention arm had more chickens (mean 8.8) than the Control (5.1) or Partial Intervention (6.2) arms, which was a 50% reduction in below endline (18.5 chickens). Qualitative results indicate that chicken ownership, education about the nutritional value of eggs, and spousal support facilitated IYC egg consumption. Barriers included egg production, cultural taboos, and animal health. Motivational factors reported included the observed improvement in child health, increased availability of mothers' time, and mothers' financial independence. Knowledge sharing within the Full and Partial Intervention groups was widely reported, and the sustainability of IYC egg consumption was reinforced by accountability among mothers and to community leaders, flipbooks distributed during the project, and high motivation. Discussion Main findings indicate that mothers who received the full Un Oeuf intervention were able to overcome barriers to feeding their child an egg daily, were able to improve their livelihood, were motivated to continue feeding their child eggs, and saw the addition of eggs into the child's diet as sustainable. Future nutrition sensitive agriculture interventions should consider tailoring this approach for other LMIC contexts. Future research is needed to explore a possible threshold in the number of household chickens necessary to continuously feed a child an egg a day.

/pdf/sustainability-and-scalability-of-egg-consumption-in-burkina-3i28g0j1.pdf

Sustainability and scalability of egg consumption in Burkina Faso for infant and young child feeding

Nutrition-sensitive agriculture programmes have the potential to improve child nutrition outcomes, but livestock intensification may pose risks related to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) conditions. We assessed the impact of SELEVER, a nutrition- and gender-sensitive poultry intervention, with and without added WASH focus, on hygiene practices, morbidity and anthropometric indices of nutrition in children aged 2-4 years in Burkina Faso. A 3-year cluster randomised controlled trial was implemented in 120 villages in 60 communes (districts) supported by the SELEVER project. Communes were randomly assigned using restricted randomisation to one of three groups: (1) SELEVER intervention (n = 446 households); (2) SELEVER plus WASH intervention (n = 432 households); and (3) control without intervention (n = 899 households). The study population included women aged 15-49 years with an index child aged 2-4 years. We assessed the effects 1.5-years (WASH substudy) and 3-years (endline) post-intervention on child morbidity and child anthropometry secondary trial outcomes using mixed effects regression models. Participation in intervention activities was low in the SELEVER groups, ranging from 25% at 1.5 years and 10% at endline. At endline, households in the SELEVER groups had higher caregiver knowledge of WASH-livestock risks (∆ = 0.10, 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.04-0.16]) and were more likely to keep children separated from poultry (∆ = 0.09, 95% CI [0.03-0.15]) than in the control group. No differences were found for other hygiene practices, child morbidity symptoms or anthropometry indicators. Integrating livestock WASH interventions alongside poultry and nutrition interventions can increase knowledge of livestock-related risks and improve livestock-hygiene-related practices, yet may not be sufficient to improve the morbidity and nutritional status of young children. 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/mcn.13528

Effects of an integrated poultry value chain, nutrition, gender and WASH intervention (SELEVER) on hygiene and child morbidity and anthropometry in Burkina Faso: A secondary outcome analysis of a cluster randomised trial

Can a gender-sensitive integrated poultry value chain and nutrition intervention increase women's empowerment among the rural poor in Burkina Faso?

/pdf/breathe-easy-there-s-an-app-for-that-using-information-and-1uif99xa.pdf

Josué Awonon

Papers

How light is too light touch: The effect of a short training-based intervention on household poultry production in Burkina Faso