Nurturing Care for Early Child Development: Using the Common Elements Approach to Develop an Integrated and Scalable Intervention for at Risk Mothers and Children in Pakistan

Millions of children in low resource settings are at high risk of poor development due to factors such as undernutrition, inadequate stimulation and maternal depression. Evidence based interventions to address these risk factors exist, but often as a separate and overlapping packages delivered through disjointed systems, therefore posing problems in scale-up. We propose three innovations to address this. First, we will develop, using a common elements approach, a single integrated package that combines evidence based elements from packages of care addressing early stimulation, responsive feeding and perinatal depression. Second, we will develop a training app, using a smart phone platform, for community health workers and caregivers to be trained in the intervention. Third, we will identify “champion mothers" who will play a key role in disseminating the program in partnership with community health workers and thus assisting scalability.