Co-designing “Familia Bora”: a father-inclusive parenting intervention for couples with young children in Mwanza, Tanzania

This paper describes the development of Familia Bora (“Good Family”), a multicomponent, father-inclusive parenting intervention aimed at enhancing caregiving practices of both fathers and mothers, strengthening couples’ relationships dynamics, improving parental mental health and gender equity, and ultimately promoting early childhood development. From 2022 to 2024, we co-designed this intervention in Mwanza, Tanzania through a multi-phase, community-based, and iterative process grounded in a collaborative and equitable research-practice partnership. We began with a systematic review of father-inclusive interventions followed by a qualitative formative research study to identify priority fatherhood behaviors and contextual determinants of fathering in the local Tanzanian context. We then co-designed intervention content to address the multifaceted dimensions of fatherhood by integrating family systems, gender-transformative, and developmental perspectives and aiming to ensure cultural and contextual relevance. We piloted and iteratively refined individual sessions through 54 rapid pretesting cycles with 381 parents (53% mothers, 47% fathers) across 13 communities and incorporated participant feedback to continuously improve content and delivery and ensure cultural relevance and acceptability. This process resulted in a structured, manualized curriculum for a community-based group parenting program for fathers and their partners with young children aged 0–2 years. The curriculum holistically promotes nurturing care, couples’ relationships, caregiver mental health, and gender equality by applying a gender-transformative lens, centering child development throughout, and framing parenthood as a multidimensional role. Overall, this study showcases a systematic, evidence-based, and community-engaged approach to co-designing a father-inclusive parenting program. The resulting intervention demonstrates strong potential to engage fathers and improve family-wide outcomes for fathers, mothers, and young children. Building on our rigorous design process and promising initial results, further implementation and evaluation research is needed to assess program feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness.