The 1,000 days between a woman’s pregnancy and her child’s 2nd birthday offer a unique window of opportunity to shape healthier and more prosperous futures. The right nutrition during this 1,000 days window can have profound impact on a child’s ability to grow, learn, and rise out of poverty. The Golden 1000 Days Communication Campaign aims to increase awareness importance of the first 1000 days and bring necessary behavior change that will eventually reduce maternal and child mortality through improved health and nutritional status of adolescents, pregnant and mothers of children under 2 years of age as well as young children. As part of the campaign design framework process monitoring, preliminary information collection was conducted with the aim of assessing the current situation of programme VDCs in terms of knowledge and current practices related to the Golden 1000 days recommended behaviors and establishing a reference point for programme monitoring to assess the progress in different time intervals.

In the first phase, Golden 1000 Days Communication Campaign is being implemented in 16 districts under the leadership of National Health Education Information and Communication Center (NHEICC) with support from UNICEF. Out of 16 districts, 75 VDCs from 6 districts Panchthar, Parsa, Kapilvastu, Jumla, Achham and Bajura; have been identified as an intensive behavior monitoring district. In this regard, Social Development and Promotion Center, a national NGO has been selected for facilitating the implementation of intensive behavior monitoring of the campaign. The information collected through this survey will be for internal use.Through Social Development Promotion Centre(SDPC) program staff Preliminary data collection was conducted in February in MSNP districts selected for intensive behavior monitoring namely, Parsa, Panchthar, Jumla, Kapilvastu, Bajura and Achham. Multistage Systematic Random Sampling method was used to select sample from population. Out of 75 VDCs from the six working districts, 23 VDCs were randomly selected in first phase. Out of 207 wards in 23 VDCs, 69 wards were randomly selected in the second phase. 2178 households were selected from all four phases using systematic random sampling with response rate of 99%. All the respondents were female from Terai region and Hilly region of Nepal. For secondary data collection, information was collected from registers maintained at 45 Health facilities.

Preliminary findings reveal that almost half of the women had their first pregnancy before the age of 20 years. Two fifths of the women were married before the age of 18 years. It appears that 57% of women have completed 4 ANC, statistically close to 57% of the women who have gone for PNC. Overall, only 16% of the pregnant women and 12% of mothers of children under 2 years of age consume four varieties of food groups including animal source. Likewise, the practice of delivering babies at health facilities and hospitals is prevalent in less than 65% of the women. Almost three quarters (73%) of all respondents practiced early initiation of breast feeding. Figures for exclusive breastfeeding till the child turned 6 months is slightly less than 70%. Extended breastfeeding, on the other hand, is practiced by 90% of the women. The prevalence of delayed bathing is seen among 85% of the respondents. Children of age 7-12 months should be fed complementary food 3-4 times a day and 75% of the mothers were found practicing this. In terms of sanitation and hygiene, more than 85% of the households have access to toilet. People’s awareness about golden 1000 days was also assessed and overall, less than half of all the respondents were aware about it.