Impact Of Nutrition Intervention On Knowledge And Practices Of School Children And Their Parents

Abstract

The present study was undertaken with the objective of assessing the impact of nutrition newlineintervention on knowledge and practices of school going children along with their newlineparents. Under this experimental-control study two schools were selected based upon newlinepurposive random sampling. Two hundred and forty students (10-12 years) along with newlinetheir parents were selected based upon systematic random sampling and divided into newlinetwo groups: experimental group (n=121) who received an interactive nutrition newlineeducation intervention for a period of 12 weeks and control group (n=125), who did not newlinereceive any intervention. Using a structured pre tested questionnaire, pre data was newlinecollected on knowledge and practices of children and parents, anthropometric newlinemeasurements of children, food frequency and 3-day dietary recall of children and one newlinemonth post the 12 weeks intervention period, post data was collected from both the newlinegroups. All the data was analysed using Microsoft office and SPSS 23. The intervention newlinepackage for children consisted of nutrition education, activities, games and posters newlinewhich were delivered in sessions of 30-40 minutes, once a week for 12 weeks. Parents newlinewere intervened once in the beginning. Regular information exchange and follow up newlinewith parents was a part of the intervention. Acceptability of the intervention by students newlinewas 86% and by parents it was 62%, respectively. Post four months, experimental group newlinedepicted an increase in BMI normal category by 11.5%, whereas control group depicted newlinean increase of 5.6%. Experimental group showed an increase of 86.8% in health-related newlineknowledge as compared to control group (0.8%). Knowledge increase in terms of newlinehuman digestive system and food groups was also higher in experimental group post 4 newlinemonths. Significant increase was seen in experimental group regarding my plate newline(86.8%) and food pyramid concept (33.1%), whereas for control group it was -6.4% newlineand 1.6% respectively. Knowledge and practice of reading food labels increased among newlineexperimental gr