فهرست نشریات علمی دسترسی آزاد ایران

INTRODUCTION: Adolescence is characterized by a rapid phase of growth and developmentduring which the requirement of nutrition and micronutrients is relatively high. Although there is adecreasing trend in the prevalence of undernutrition among adolescents, the current prevalenceof undernutrition is still very high (41.9%). Adolescents with good nutrition knowledge are morelikely to follow healthy eating habits. In the light of this, the current study was planned to assess thebaseline nutrition‑related knowledge of adolescent girls and the effectiveness of nutrition educationmaterial (flipchart) in increasing their nutrition‑related knowledge.MATERIALS AND METHODS: A school‑based interventional study was conducted among adolescentgirls of class 9th of a school in an urban slum of Delhi. A structured pretested Knowledge AssessmentQuestionnaire consisting of 10 multiple‑choice questions in Hindi with a maximum score of 10 wasused. The intervention was a nutrition education session conducted by doctors of Community Healthdepartment using specially designed flipcharts covering important aspects of nutrition relevant foradolescent girls. A demonstration of food items and charts and flex material was also given. Thetotal sample size was 265 adolescent girls.RESULTS: Baseline knowledge as assessed by mean pretest score was poor (3.698 ± 1.81).The students’ baseline knowledge was significantly associated with mother’s educationalstatus (P = 0.024). There was a significant increase (mean difference was 1.7890 ± 0.1434) in thenutrition‑related knowledge of the participants after the intervention (P < 0.001). The proportion ofstudents who improved, i.e., 147 (55.47%) was more than proportion who deteriorated (25 [9.43%])after the educational session. This difference was found to be statistically significant (P ≤ 0.001).CONCLUSION: Nutrition knowledge was found poor among school‑going adolescent girls, whichsignificantly improved after the nutrition education session.