Use of Piggybacking Strategy Successfully in a Randomized Controlled Trial on Food Safety Training of Street Food Vendors - An Example from School of Public Health, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh, India

Abstract

Introduction: Piggybacking approach has been extensively used in almost every known field from physical to virtual. In our day today life, we see it use in social networking sites such as Facebook, yahoo mail where multiple applications are carried over/piggybacked on the existing basic connecting platform. In India, this strategy is commonly used in Malaria control programme by distribution of Insecticide Treated Bed Nets (ITNs) through antenatal care or during immunization campaigns for measles and polio. The advantage of piggy backing approach is multi-faceted in terms of resources, time and effort.

Materials and Methods: We utilised this opportunity, to piggyback anti-tobacco campaign using health education approaches on concurrent Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) for assessing the effectiveness of food safety training interventions among street food vendors. Data entry and analysis was done using SPSS version 22.0 and descriptive statistics was used to define the numerical data.

Results: So far data of 40 street food vendors (intervention arm=20 and control arm=20) has been analysed. In the intervention arm 11 (n=20) street food vendors were using tobacco in any form compared to 13 (n=20) in the control group at baseline. None of vendors in both the arm had any knowledge regarding FSSAI Act and COTPA at the baseline. 45% (n=9) in the intervention arm were washing hand after consuming any of the tobacco products at first follow up compared to 10% (n=2) at baseline.

Conclusion: Piggybacking strategy can be used in public health programmes to augment one intervention over another to achieve favourable public health outcome.