One of the most effective ways to improve maternal and child health and development in developing countries is to increase the number of children who are exclusively breastfed to six months and who begin to receive appropriate complementary foods thereafter. Well-designed nutrition education interventions aimed at providing child feeding information and support to mothers are an effective means to this end but delivering such information to mothers in the developing world is made difficult by maternal time constraints, cultural barriers, and limited points of delivery. For these reasons, it is hypothesized that young child feeding practices in these settings could be substantially improved with well-designed nutrition-education interventions aimed specifically at nulliparous adolescents. Currently, innovative interventions of this type are hampered by limited information on adolescents' child feeding knowledge and intentions; information that is critical to the design of appropriate messages, materials, and programs. The proposed research seeks to remedy this by exploring current knowledge of child feeding practices and examining child feeding intentions among a diverse sample of Ethiopian adolescents. The main outcomes of interest are adolescents' knowledge and attitudes about specific feeding issues, and their intentions to exclusively breastfeed their children to six months, introduce appropriate foods starting at six months, and not use bottles to feed infants. Exposure to potential points of delivery for nutrition education programs will also be examined. Results from this proposed work will be among the first to report on adolescents' knowledge and intentions regarding infant and child feeding in the developing world, and will be useful as baseline data in this specific case, but will also have programmatic implications for public health interventions more broadly. ? ?
| Hadley, Craig; Lindstrom, David; Tessema, Fasil et al. (2008) Gender bias in the food insecurity experience of Ethiopian adolescents. Soc Sci Med 66:427-38 |
| Hadley, Craig; Lindstrom, David; Belachew, Tefera et al. (2008) Ethiopian adolescents'attitudes and expectations deviate from current infant and young child feeding recommendations. J Adolesc Health 43:253-9 |
