Assessment of a Nutrition Education Program designed to Enhance Mothers’ Attitudes on Infants and Young Children feeding in Sudan

Abstract

Objective: To assess the effect of a designed nutrition education program (NEP) on maternal attitudes.
 Methods: A control two groups quasi-experimental pre- and post-experimental were adopted. Data were collected through personal interviews of two groups using a validated questionnaire. The nutrition education program was conducted in three phases. Phase one was the pre-evaluation, phase two was the program’s implementation, and phase three entailed post evaluation of the program.
 Results: The results supported the efficient role of the NEP intervention in raising mothers’ attitudes towards nutritional care of under two years in Sennar Locality, Sudan. There was no significant difference between the two groups with respect to the controlled variables; mother age, mother education, mother occupation, husband occupation, number of children less than 5 years, family size, and child’s age, which indicates that the two groups were homogenous, i.e., no significant difference between mothers’ attitude of the two groups before applying the NEP. The results showed the effectiveness of the NEP in developing experimental group mother’s attitudes, comparing post-test with pre-test in favor of post-test to be statistically significant. NEP has a huge impact in developing the mother’s awareness post-test, measuring and developing the mother’s attitudes compared to post-test with pre-test.
 Conclusions and Implications: The nutrition education intervention demonstrated its effectiveness in maternal attitude. The study provided valuable baseline information to develop appropriate training courses and nutrition education programs to raise maternal awareness and attitudes towards infants and young children’s nutrition.