Paper
Thursday, July 12, 2007
The Effect of a Nutrition Education Program on Nicaraguan Adolescent Girls and their Mothers
Jean B. Moore, PhD, RN, School of Nursing, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA and Lisa Pawloski, PhD, Department of Global and Community Health, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA.
| Learning Objective #1: describe factors that compromise the nutritional status of Nicaraguan adolescent girls. |
| Learning Objective #2: identify factors that are related to anemia in adolescent girls in Nicaragua. |
In this study the researchers sought to improve the nutritional status of adolescent girls in Nicaragua by providing a nutrition education intervention to girls and their mothers. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a nutrition education program on the nutrition knowledge, self-care practices, hemoglobin levels, and nutrition status of Nicaraguan adolescent girls and the nutritional knowledge and dependent-care behavior of their mothers. Such research is necessary because girls in Nicaragua are at risk for poor nutrition, have been shown to have compromised growth, are at risk for anemia, and face future pregnancies. This longitudinal study employed a mixed quantitative/qualitative design to study the impact of the nutrition education program. A pre-experimental design was used to determine the effect of the intervention on knowledge, practice, hemoglobin, and status. A qualitative approach was used to explore what factors kept girls and mothers from changing self-care practices. The setting for the study was a nursing center, run by nurses from a university school of nursing, in a barrio in Managua, Nicaragua. Data were collected from a non-probability sample of 182 adolescent girls over a four-year period and from 67 of their mothers over a two-year period in Managua, Nicaragua. The three-year nutrition education program consisted of the implementation of four nutrition education classes delivered every three months over a three-year period for girls (12 classes) and over a two-year period for mothers (8 classes). In most cases, pretest-posttest comparisons indicated that girls’ and mothers’ knowledge of nutrition increased as a result of the nutrition education program. The nutrition practices of both girls and mothers improved as well. The findings on nutrition status improvement were somewhat mixed. No significant improvement was found for hemoglobin levels, but factors that significantly influenced this variable were identified.