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Article History

Received: 30 January 2019

Accepted: 30 May 2019

First Online: 16 July 2019

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: Local village and district leaders were informed about the trial protocol in the local language and consent for service operations was sought from community leaders. Routine demographic surveillance operations permit respondents to decline participation, although no incidence of denial arose. Children and their guardians (parents or primary caregivers) were eligible for allocation to the treatment condition if their main residence was located in one of the designated treatment sample clusters. Children were eligible for community health worker provided care if they were younger than 5 years and resided permanently in the enumerated households of a treatment cluster. A child was also eligible if he or she was born to an eligible woman after the randomization or he or she moved permanently into the study area.The service operational plan, training program and data collection procedure was reviewed and approved by the ethical review committees of the Tanzania Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the National Medical Research Coordination Committee of the National Institute for Medical Research and the Ifakara Health Institute’s Institutional Review Board (Registration file number: NIMR/HQ/R.8a/Vol.IX/1203). Connect investigators sought authorization for use of data from the Ifakara Health Institute through the Connect project (Ifakara Health Institute Internal Review Board file number 16–2010). Ethical clearance for the analysis was also accorded by the Columbia University Medical Center Institutional Review Board (Protocol-AAAF3452). To ensure compliance with mandated data collection procedures, each respondent for health and demographic surveillance system operations was provided with a brief explanation of the interviewing process and then asked to provide written informed consent. Respondents remained anonymous.

: Not applicable.

: The Corresponding author is a member of the BMC Health Services Research Advisory Committee. Other authors of this publication have no competing interests to declare.