Effectiveness of a Nutrition Education Program in Improving Mothers’ Knowledge and Feeding Practices of Infants and Young Children in Sudan

Objective: To assess the effect of a designed nutrition education program (NEP) on maternal Knowledge and practices Methods: A control two groups quasi-experimental pre- and post-experimental were adopted. Data were collected through personal interviews of two groups using a validated questionnaire. The nutrition education program was conducted in three phases. Phase one was the pre-evaluation; phase two was the program's implementation, and phase three entailed post-evaluation of the program. Results: The results supported the efficient role of the NEP intervention in raising mothers ' Knowledge and practices towards nutritional care of children under two years in Sennar Locality. No statistically significant differences were found between the two groups with the controlled variable, mother age, mother education, mother occupation, husband occupation, No of children less than five years, family size, and infant age. This indicates that the two groups were homogenous. No significant difference between the two groups in mothers' Knowledge and practices before applying the NEP. The results showed the effectiveness of the NEP in developing experimental group mother's Knowledge and practices, comparing post-test with pre-test in favor of post-test to be statistically significant. NEP has a greater effect in developing mother's awareness post-test measuring and developing mother's Knowledge and practices comparing post-test with pre-test. Conclusions and Implications: It can be concluded that nutrition education intervention demonstrated its effectiveness in maternal Knowledge and practices. The study provided valuable baseline information to develop appropriate training courses and nutrition education programs to raise maternal Knowledge and practices towards infants and young children's nutrition.