Frontline Nutrition Care Providers Are Ill‐Prepared to Handle Prenatal Nutrition Education and Counseling at Primary Health Care Facilities in Ghana

Nutrition education and counseling (NEC) are vital services of prenatal care for all women during pregnancy. The frontline nutrition care providers are usually nurses at community‐based health planning and services (CHPS) compounds and health centers in Ghana. It is unclear whether these nurses have adequate knowledge on the expected NEC they provide for pregnant women. This study seeks to find out: (1) whether nurses in CHPS compounds and health centers have adequate knowledge on diet quality and its measure, (2) whether the training curriculum of these nurses meet the expected nutrition counseling on diet quality for women by WHO, (3) the fraction of nutrition credit hours in the training of nurses, and (4) the awareness level of nutrition counseling themes for pregnancy among nurses in CHPS compounds and health centers. Institutional cross sectional study design was employed. Data was collected using a semi‐structured questionnaire. In all, 102 nurses (15–59 years) were selected from eight facilities using convenient sampling. All the 102 nurses had no knowledge of the food groups’ classification for measuring diet quality for women, almost all the nurses (84%) did not know the measure for diet quality (minimum dietary diversity). The curricula for training frontline nutrition providers (community health nurses and midwives who are specifically tasked to deliver NEC) neither contain the food groups’ classification for measuring diet quality for women nor specified a measure for diverse diet or diet quality. The observed trends show some lapses in frontline health workers’ nutrition knowledge and training. These lapses call for rethinking of the nutrition training of frontline health workers tasked to handle NEC for pregnant women.