Effect of Nutrition Education on Knowledge and Healthy Dietary Practice Among Pregnant Women
Condition: Pregnancy Nutritional Disease
MeSH terms: Nutrition Disorders
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      Healthy pregnancy and birth outcomes is greatly influenced by the intake of adequate and
      balanced nutrition. Pregnant women's nutritional knowledge and practice have been identified
      as an important prerequisites for their proper nutritional intake. The antenatal period with
      the opportunities for regular contact with health professionals appears to be the ideal time
      and setting to institute the intervention which could maximize pregnant women's outcome and
      that of their baby by motivating them to make nutritional changes. The overall objective of
      the research was to assess the effect of nutrition education on the appropriate nutritional
      knowledge and practice of pregnant women.
    

Detailed description: 
      Adequate and balanced nutrition during gestation has been recognized as a prerequisite for a
      healthy pregnancy and birth outcomes and this is significantly determined by their
      nutritional knowledge and practice. This facility based single group pre-post quasi
      experimental study design was conducted with the objective of assessing the effect of
      nutrition education on the appropriate nutritional knowledge and practice of pregnant women.
      The study was conducted in five health facilities providing ANC (Antenatal Care) service in
      Asmara on 226 pregnant women. A predesigned and pretested questionnaire was used to collect
      data regarding nutritional knowledge via interview by trained data collectors during the
      pretest, immediate posttest and six weeks later. This study showed that the current
      intervention generally was effective in accomplishing improved knowledge and practice level
      of pregnant women. The simple nutrition education messages given to pregnant women using
      holistic approach of targeting all the major determinants in a sustained manner played a huge
      role in increasing their knowledge regarding nutrition during pregnancy. Knowledge regarding
      duration of iron supplementation was very low in this study. At the same time minor knowledge
      gap was seen in the sources of main food groups among pregnant women. The provided nutrition
      education also helped the pregnant women to improve dietary intake during pregnancy, although
      their adherence to iron supplements was decreased. Skipping meals and avoiding certain food
      items was also evident in this study. A reassuring concept is that food taboos and cultural
      factors were never the reasons that prevented women from consuming the food items. The
      educational intervention has shown more positive impact on increasing the scores regarding
      knowledge of appropriate nutrition during pregnancy for primigravida mothers than for
      multigravida mothers while the improvement in the dietary practice had no interaction with
      their socio-demographic characteristics. To sum up, attenuation of maternal and infant
      malnutrition may not be remote if pregnant women are well educated and counseled about
      nutrition during pregnancy. The study was conducted under limitations of not being able to
      control the possible effect of other sources like Television, books, magazines and radio
      broadcasting on the change in the knowledge and practice of pregnant women towards nutrition
      could not be controlled. Face to face interview may lead to social desirability bias which
      may in turn bring higher proportion of correct practice among pregnant women on the follow-up
      questioning (as the practice is self-reported).
    

Intervention name(s): Nutrition Education counseling
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): In the context of health education program, an educational intervention was developed by the research team based on a training module. The nutrition education contained introductory messages and focused on meanings of healthy diet, eating a variety of food, eating well with the locally available food, hazards of maternal malnutrition, important supplements to be taken during pregnancy, harmful substances to be avoided, and measures of alleviating common discomforts associated with nutrition during pregnancy. The training program was carried out in the form of counseling using printed materials and flip charts for pictorial representation. Self-reading of leaflets containing the core messages for every topic prepared in the native language of the participants was also employed as the women in the study had one each.
Intervention model: Single Group Assignment
Intervention model description: Pregnant women who were on their first and second trimester of pregnancy
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Other
Keywords: Nutrition education; Knowledge; Practice