Effect of Nutrition Education on Knowledge and Healthy Dietary Practice Among Pregnant Women

Effect of Nutrition Education by Health Professionals on Pregnancy Specific Nutrition Knowledge and Healthy Dietary Practice Among Pregnant Women in Asmara, Eritrea

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.

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).

Inclusion Criteria:

• Pregnant women who were on their first and second trimester of pregnancy and willing to participate in the study were included

Exclusion Criteria:

• Pregnant women who were sick at the time of the study and those who cannot communicate verbally.