Assessment on the Outcomes of Promotion of Nutrition Education on Dietary Diversity Among Women’s of Reproductive Age (15-49 Years) and Children Aged 6-36 Month in Tigray Regional State Selected Rural Kebeles
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Date
2018-11-03
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Poor nutrition disproportionately affects women and children in rural areas of low and middle income countries. This is linked with 45 % of child death. Mothers/caregivers inadequate knowledge of Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) practices and poor cultural belifes increases the risk of nutrition disorders. Integrating nutrition education with food preference and nutrition-sensitive agriculture has the potential to improve diets, but rigorous evaluation of this approach are limited. Therefore, the present study investigated the outcomes of promotion of nutrition education in the presence and absence of nutrition-sensitive agriculture interventions on WRA and their children dietary intake in the rural farming community.
Quasi-experimental study with two arms 1) NSA+BCC and 2) BCC alone was conducted from February-May 2018 to assess the outcomes of promotion of nutrition education on dietary diversity among women’s of reproductive age and children aged 6 to 36 months in Tigray region selected rural kebeles. The study was designed to include 200 mother-child pairs and sampling were directed by using simple random sampling technique to select the study participants. Women and children dietary intake have been measured using qualitative open 24-hrs dietary recall technique adopted from FAO and WHO.
In the baseline assessment, proportion of minimum DD was extremely low (4.9% women and 4.1% children) in the BCC group. At the endline, 20.8% of women and 32.5% children from the NSA+BCC group has met the recommended minimum DD. NSA+BCC significantly improved the proportion of women and children meeting minimum DD, when compared to BCC alone (P<0.05). BCC alone had also shown positive trend in dietary diversity between baseline and endline values.
Although both BCC and NSA+BCC improve dietary diversity, the increase in the proportion of children and women meeting the minimum DD was significantly higher when BCC and NSA were combined. Therefore, in rural farming communities integrating BCC that is informed by food preference along with NSA is recommended to improve diets of women and children.
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BCC, Dietary Diversity, Infant and Young Child Feeding, Nutrition Education, Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture, Tigray