By Yusli Harini, Health Team Leader
As we are now in the fourth year of our five-year malnutrition study “Developing a Family-Based Nutrition Intervention Model in Ban Village” in collaboration with Udayana University Faculty of Medicine, we are now implementing the developed model and evaluating the impact of our 2021 first stage trial interventions.
To investigate this model’s effectiveness, we visited 2021 research participants comprising: 15 pregnant women’s families, 40 breastfeeding mother’s families, and 29 adolescent females from July 13th to August 20th. Our assessment methods included focus group discussions with the families, in-depth interviews with adolescent females, and taking anthropometric measurements of the children, adolescent females, and infants born to participating pregnant women.
The encouraging results included: a notable increase in the active involvement of husbands in meeting the nutritional needs of their families; enhanced self-esteem among adolescent females regarding their body image; and a positive diversification in their dietary habits.
A noteworthy testimony from a former participant of the adolescent females’ peer education group, who is now married, reflecting on her journey, speaks volumes: “I changed my dietary habits. Acquiring knowledge about balanced nutrition has led me to adopt a more consistent balanced diet, incorporating locally-sourced foods from my garden. I also obediently took iron supplementation during my pregnancy, well-aware from peer education sessions that anaemia could be dangerous for both mother and baby. Thanks to these efforts, my pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding phases passed without complications, and my baby was born healthy.”
We are so pleased to find these stories! We hope that more families will benefit from this model, ultimately paving the way for a malnutrition-free future in Ban Village. •
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