T J Marchione | PubMed Health

PubMed1990

Food supplementation programs and breastfeeding practices.

There has been insufficient evaluation of food supplementation programs and their effect on breastfeeding. On the one hand, they reach millions of childbearing women, often in rural areas with little or no other services, and act as a magnet for other health interventions to take place. On the other hand, the risks of substituting food assistance for breast milk and overburdening health personnel with feeding responsibilities, contradict breastfeeding promotion efforts. There is some evidence that focusing on pregnant women rather than infants will reduce these problems and will result in fewer low birth weight babies and better capacity for the mother to produce breast milk.

Breast Feeding↗

PubMed1984

Evaluating primary health care and nutrition programs in the context of national development.

This paper illustrates an evaluation model incorporating research techniques of both primary health care and social anthropology. The case in point is the Jamaican Government's Community Health Aide Programme, which employs over 1300 auxiliary health workers to serve the low-income population of the island. The study demonstrates a cardinal principle of the anthropological approach--a grounded and holistic understanding of the social and environmental context is necessary to translate data into useful information. The study demonstrates connections between the distribution of care, the power of the cosmopolitan medical profession, and the Jamaican political patronage system. Finally, the impact of the program is assessed on child growth measures against the background of the Jamaican economy as it evolved from 1970 to 1980.

Community Health Workers↗