Improving complementary feeding in Ethiopia requires a special focus on dietary diversity. The Sustainable Undernutrition Reduction in Ethiopia (SURE) program is a government-led multisectoral intervention that aims to integrate the work of the health and agriculture sectors to deliver a complex multicomponent intervention to improve child feeding and reduce stunting. The Federal Ministries of Health and Agriculture and Natural Resources implement the intervention. The purpose of this baseline survey was to establish baseline characteristics at the outset of the program in intervention and comparison woredas and to assess the comparability of the two groups; including, socio-demographic characteristics, infant and young child feeding practices, household food insecurity, women's dietary diversity, agricultural production, nutritional status (stunting, wasting and underweight) and anemia among children 0-47 months. A cross-sectional survey was carried out in four agrarian regions of Ethiopia from April to July 2016. SURE intervention woredas were pre-selected by the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH). Therefore, a plausibility design was selected to compare a stratified random sample of those SURE intervention woredas to an equal number of comparison woredas. 72 weredas, 4 Kebeles from each woreda, and 15 households from each gote were randomly sampled for this baseline survey.
The result of the survey reveals that the prevalence of stunting among children 6-23 months old was 31.3% and 27.9%; whereas underweight prevalence was 19% and 16.5% and wasting was 9% and 8% in the intervention and comparison woredas, respectively. Among children 24-47 months old, stunting prevalence was 46.9% and 40.5%, underweight was 23.7% and 21.6% and wasting was 4% in the intervention and comparison woredas, respectively. Breastfeeding was nearly universal in all woredas included in this survey. Over 60% of children initiated breastfeeding within an hour of birth and nearly 80% of children in both arms were exclusively breastfed. About three-quarters of all children initiated complementary feeding between 6 to 9 months of age but only 4.5% and 7.8% of all children had access to the minimum recommended diversified diet in the intervention and comparison woredas, respectively. About 41% and 45% of all households were food insecure in the intervention and comparison woredas, respectively. Only about 5% in the intervention and 8% in comparison woredas of all mothers interviewed had the minimum recommended diversified diet.
In conclusion, the intervention and comparison woredas are comparable in most of the demographic and socio-economic characteristics. The prevalence of undernutrition, child feeding practices, food insecurity, and women's dietary diversity practices are more or less comparable between the two groups.

• Atribute value is not yet filled
• cross-sectional design
• infant and young child feeding
• minimum acceptable diet
• community-based nutrition
• Sustainable Undernutrition Reduction
• Ethiopia

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This dataset is generated by a cross-sectional survey conducted in four agrarian regions of Ethiopia from April to July 2016. This dataset captures the main target variables for SURE evaluation study such as nutritional status (underweight, wasting, stunting, haemoglobin), infant and young child feeding (Exclusive Breastfeeding, initiation of breastfeeding and complementary feeding, minimum meal frequency, minimum dietary diversity, minimum acceptable diet), services (Vitamin A supplementation coverage, growth monitoring and promotion (GMP), MUAC screening coverage, coverage of joint household visit of extension workers, prevalence of diarrhoea, respiratory infection and fever in past two weeks and its treatment), women's empowerment (income generation and decision making measured by proportion) , food security and dietary diversity, agriculture practices (crop production diversity, animal source food production and use, land management, water management, improved livestock production, social inputs), Water, hygiene & sanitation (using improved latrine, households who treat water, hand washing, presence and absence of soap, dispose of household waste, keep livestock in confined areas) and household characteristics (ethnicity, religion, wealth index, education).

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