Improving under-nutrition through pulses-based nutrition education

Background: Adolescent girls’ under-nutrition is associated with significant morbidity and, mortality, further perpetuating cycle of malnutrition in generations. In Ethiopia, adolescent girls’ problem of under-nutrition has already been recognized to be an important public health problem. However, evidence related to efficient alternative solutions to support government efforts is limited in the country. There are plenty of evidences that a nutrition education based on population’s context is an efficient intervention to improving adolescent girls’ nutrition. Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of pulses-based nutrition education in improving the nutritional status of adolescent girls’ in Northwest EthiopiaMethods: A three arm cluster randomized controlled trial will be employed. The study will be conducted among adolescent girls in Northwest Ethiopia from Nov 2021 to April, 2022. Clusters will be first stratified into urban and rural and then assigned into intervention and control groups. Adolescent girls from the respective schools will be recruited by systematic random sampling until the required sample size is attained. A total of 639 participants based on a one two one ratio basis will be recruited. The intervention is a nutrition education, focusing on pulses food. The education will be delivered over 4-6 weeks on a single 45-60 minutes session per week basis. Reduction in underweight is the outcome variable, and will be measured by anthropometric measurements. The study will have pre-and-post measurements. Multilevel logistic regression model will be employed. Relative risks with the respective confidence intervals and p-values will be calculated. A variable having a p-value < 0.05 will be considered statistically significant.Keywords: Cluster randomized trial; Adolescent girls; Nutrition education; Pulses food; Underweight.