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Increasing Animal Source Food in Diets of HIV-Infected Kenyan Women and Their Children: Can Treatment Outcomes be Enhanced?

The combined burdens of malnutrition and HTV/AJDS have culminated in a formidable health challenge in Kenya.

This grant will provide a framework for greater inclusion of animal source foods (ASF) in diets of women of childbearing age, nursing mothers and children in communities of Kenya where HIV/AIDS is prevalent, and will determine if the inclusion of ASF in diets increases the positive outcomes of HIV/AIDS treatment.

This framework will include:

1. Identifying the input constraints in the production of dairy products and poultry as ASF in rural Kenyan communities;
2. Determining access to technical information, knowledge transfer, and applied demonstration of animal rearing practices in a community;
3. Determining food resource and distribution patterns within Kenyan communities;
4. Determining health status of reproductively aged women and children before and after introduction of ASF in their diets by measuring:
5. 1. Medical status (glucose tolerance, lipid profiles, gastrointestinal function, immune function, HIV disease viral load, other infectious diseases); and
   2. Nutritional status [anthropometric (height, weight, body mass index, and body skinfolds and circumferences), body composition (bioelectrical impedance analysis (BJA), sum of skinfolds), biochemical indices (serum albumin, retinol binding protein, hemoglobin, hematocrit, mean corpuscular volume, mean corpuscular hemoglobin, mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration, ferritin, zinc, Vitamin A, Vitamin B12) and nutrient intake (24 hour dietary recall, food frequency questionnaires and perhaps 3-day food records)];
6. Initiating and fostering linkages with agricultural specialists, university researchers and extension staff in Kenya; and
7. Identifying reliable outcome measures for changes in agriculture production and practices.

Click here to see the poster presentation for this project.