Role Of Nutrition Education In Improving The Nutritional Awareness Among Adolescent Girls

Abstract

Adolescent nutritional problem are common throughout the country. Some people lack adequate food while some people though have adequate amount of food yet make its poor choices. Because of these reasons, nutritional problems not only affect their growth and development but also in future would adversely affect their livelihood as adults. Occurrence of series of nutritional problems like underutrition, anemia, vitamin A deficiency, iodine deficiency and overweight or obesity may develop too in them. For prevention of these problems, WHO has emphasized that the mass information and awareness programmes should be organized to alert government and communities about the importance of health and nutrition. In view to this recommendation, a study was carried out to assess the nutritional awareness of 50 school going adolescent girls of 13-16 years age in rural area of district Kurukshetra before and after imparting nutrition education regarding healthy nutrition and dietary habits. To them, the nutrition education was imparted through lectures, audiovisual aids and demonstrations for three months. Before and after imparting nutrition education, the level of knowledge, attitude, beliefs and practices regarding good nutrition was adjudged by questionnaire cum interview method. To see the awareness level, scoring system consisting of scores between –1 to +1 depending on each question was developed. After providing nutrition education, a significant improvement in their nutritional knowledge was viewed and quantum of improvement was 1.67 times. The analysis of data also inferred that the students scoring more marks in science subject were found more attentive during the counseling sessions and had showed a rapid improvement in their score. The study was successful in identifying certain gaps in their knowledge, attitude and practices before imparting nutrition education and concluded that such awareness programmes should be organized.