The effect of nutritional knowledge and dietary practices on childbirth weight: The case of adolescents mothers in the Effutu municipality, Winneba, Ghana

Abstract

Nutritional knowledge and dietary practices of adolescent mothers are curial as they can pose a risk to the mother and the foetus. Being pregnant requires a high demand of nutrients to form new tissues and grow existing tissues as well. The research objective was to assess the effect of nutritional knowledge and dietary practices on childbirth weight of adolescent mothers in the Effutu Municipality. A survey design was employed for this study with the target population being adolescent mothers in the Effutu municipality. A purposive sampling technique was used to select 101 respondents from 11 health centres in the municipality. Questionnaires were used as the research instrument. The study found that nutritional knowledge has no significant effects on the Childs’s birth weight (.078), p< .05. The author also found that dietary practices significantly affect the Childs’ birth weight (.034), p< .05. However, a greater significant effect on the child’s birth weight (.017) was discovered when the nutritional knowledge and dietary practices are put together and treated as one variable. It is recommended that the Ministry of Health in collaboration with other NGOs should organize an effective nutrition intervention that will be directed towards adolescent mothers to improve maternal nutritional knowledge and dietary practices thereby increasing the overall nutritional status of adolescent mothers.