Background: Backyard poultry-raising is common in rural Bangladeshi households. Raising poultry contributes to fecal contamination of the domestic environment, increasing children’s exposure to enteric pathogens, including Campylobacter, which has been associated with child stunting.   Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of a behavior change communication and counseling intervention to encourage households to confine poultry outside of the household dwelling in a shed at night and improve poultry feces management.   Methods: We conducted a two-arm pre-post pilot study. Households in both arms received the behavior change communication and counseling intervention. Households in the subsidy arm also received ~23 USD for the construction of a poultry shed for nighttime housing. We administered a household survey and spot-check before and after intervention implementation among 37 subsidy and 42 non-subsidy households.   Results: At endline, 58% of all households had a poultry shed (87% of subsidy and 33% of non-subsidy households) and the percentage of households confining all poultry outside the house the previous night was significantly higher at endline (33%) compared to baseline (2.5%) (prevalence difference [PD]: 30 percentage points [pp]; 95% CI: [19, 41]). Additionally, more households had no visible poultry feces piles inside the house compared to baseline (PD: 26pp 95% CI: [12, 41]), but there were no significant differences in the number of poultry feces piles in the courtyard or veranda.   Discussion: Our intervention effectively encouraged households to confine poultry outside of household dwellings at night and to maintain an indoor living space free of poultry feces. Households were willing and able to construct a shed even without a subsidy. Households that received a subsidy were more likely to construct a shed. Future studies should assess if housing all poultry outside the household dwelling reduces children’s exposure to poultry feces enough to mitigate health risks associated with poultry ownership.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

This research was supported by USAID funding through WASHPaLS (USAID contract AID-OAA-I-14-00068/AID-OAA-TO-16-0016). This study was made possible by the support of the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents of this manuscript are the sole responsibility of authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government. The funders played no part in study design, data analysis, or publication of peer-reviewed results. The funder did require a final report and some of the content of this manuscript is similar to that presented in the final report (USAID and International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh 2021) all content has been used with permission.

I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

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The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

The protocol (PR-18087) for this study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of icddr,b the IRB concluded that approval for research involving animals was not required. The enumerators collected informed written consent from the primary poultry-raiser in the study household at enrollment. This trial did not assess any health outcomes and was therefore not registered as a clinical trial.

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The data that support the findings of this study can be made available upon reasonable request and approval by icddr,b.