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Interventional study to strengthen the health promoting behaviours of pregnant women to prevent anaemia in southern India . OBJECTIVES to determine the effectiveness of a health information package in terms of empowering the pregnant women to modify their health-care behaviour and take appropriate action to combat anaemia in pregnancy . DESIGN the study was conceptualized based on Rosenstock and Becker 's health belief model . A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used . The sample consists of 225 anaemic pregnant women randomly allocated in experimental ( n=75 ) , control group A ( n=75 ) and control group B ( n=75 ) . The health seeking behaviour outcome measure included knowledge regarding anaemia , food selection ability , increase in haemoglobin level and compliance to iron supplementation . Intervention was a validated planned educational programme with visual aids and iron supplementation . FINDINGS the results show the mean gain of knowledge scores of experimental group was comparatively higher and control groups A and B showed that F ratio was ( F ( 2,190 ) =11.910 , p < 0.01 ) indicating that the pregnant women learned more about anaemia prevention than others . With regard to food selection ability scores of experimental , control groups A and B the F ratio was also significant ( F ( 2,190 ) =20.92 , p < 0.01 ) . Nearly 61.2 % of the subjects in experimental group became non-anaemic after the intervention when compared to control group A . This indicated that inspite of iron supplementation received by the three groups health education contributed significantly in modifying their health seeking behaviour and their perception about significance of anaemia has a problem . CONCLUSION developing countries still face the critical problem of anaemia in pregnancy . These are the socio-cultural priority problems that demand immediate attention by the policy makers and health professionals . The national anaemia control programme focuses on iron supplementation , but nutritional education and supervision of iron supplementation has failed in different regions . The study implies that economic empowerment ; strengthening health literacy through planned educational programs will definitely improve the health behaviour of individual and community at large .
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Intervention_Educational
health information package
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Intervention_Control
control
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Intervention_Control
control
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Intervention_Other
validated planned educational programme with visual aids and iron supplementation
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Intervention_Pharmacological
iron supplementation
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Outcome_Other
mean gain of knowledge scores
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Outcome_Physical
non-anaemic
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Participant_Sex
women
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Participant_Condition
southern India