Dietary practice and nutritional status and the respective effect of pulses-based nutrition education among adolescent girls in Northwest Ethiopia: a cluster randomized controlled trial

Frontiers in Nutrition

Nutrition

Fantahun Ayenew Mekonnen¹  Telake Azale²  Gashaw Andargie Biks³  Netsanet Worku Mengistu⁴ 

[1] Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Institute of Public Health, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia;Department of Health Education and Behavioral Sciences, Institute of Public Health, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia;Department of Health Systems and Policy, Institute of Public Health, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia;Department of Human Nutrition, Institute of Public Health, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia;

关键词: cluster randomized trial;    nutrition education;    adolescent girls;    adolescents;    pulses;    legumes;    thinness;    underweight;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnut.2023.1102106

 received in 2022-11-18, accepted in 2023-08-28,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThinness and stunting are the most severe public health problems among adolescent girls in Ethiopia. An inadequate intake of protein-source foods is the most critical cause, mainly due to the non-affordability of animal-origin foods. However, research into what extent improving pulses-based food consumption could contribute to decreasing the magnitude of protein-energy undernutrition is limited.ObjectiveThis trial aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of pulses-based nutrition education in reducing the proportion of thinness among adolescent girls.MethodsA two-arm cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted among adolescent girls in Northwest Ethiopia from December 2021 to June 2022. A total of 602 adolescent girls from four schools were enrolled in the trial. Schools were assigned to intervention and control groups using the stratified cluster randomization method. Pulses-based nutrition education was the intervention, whereas the usual dietary practice of adolescent girls was the comparator. The education was delivered over 4 weeks on a 45–60-min session per week basis. Thinness was the primary outcome of the trial, measured by anthropometry. An intention-to-treat analysis method was used. A log-binomial regression model was fitted to the data. Relative risk with the respective confidence interval and value of p was calculated. A value of p < 0.05 was used to declare statistical significance. Stata 16 software was used for the analysis.ResultsAbout 89.37% of the participants in the intervention group and 92.36% in the control group completed the trial. The pulses-based nutrition education intervention did not show a significant difference in reducing the proportion of thinness among the participants in the intervention group compared to the participants in the control group even though a significant difference was observed in terms of the consumption of pulses-based food.ConclusionThe present trial was statistically non-significant in reducing thinness among adolescent girls. Similar studies that utilize objective methods for ascertaining pulses-based food consumption need to be conducted.Clinical trial registration: https://pactr.samrc.ac.za/Search.aspx, the trial was registered in the Pan African Clinical Trials Registry (PACTR202111605102515) on November 12, 2021.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Mekonnen, Biks, Azale and Mengistu.