Official Title:

Maternal Health, Literacy and Pregnancy Outcomes: the Role of Specialized Nutrition Education

Maternal health literacy and dietary intake play key roles in maternal nutrition and pregnancy outcomes like infant birth weight. A recent survey revealed that 18% of pregnancies in Ghana ended in losses, and 11% of infants had low birth weight. Nutrition education interventions may improve pregnancy outcomes , particularly among women in rural and peri-urban settings.

This study is designed to test a nutrition education program that focuses on local foods in northern Ghana. The goal is to help pregnant women eat a wider variety of foods, increase their intake of protein, energy, and iron-rich foods, and support healthy weight gain during pregnancy. We want to understand how this program impacts mothers’ knowledge about nutrition and health, and how it affects the health of their babies. The program was created with input from pregnant women and health professionals in the community.

For the intervention, we’ll create nutrition education materials tailored to the community’s needs, focusing on the importance of eating a variety of foods and obtaining sufficient protein and iron. We will enroll pregnant women who have not been pregnant before (and with a BMI less than 20) and are in their second trimester (about 16-20 weeks pregnant). Women will be randomly assigned to one of two groups. The group that gets the nutrition intervention will have six education sessions. Two of these sessions (at weeks 21-22 and 31-32) will be led by Registered Dietitians at a health facility, while the other four sessions will be conducted by trained nutrition assistants during biweekly home visits

Mothers will complete health and nutrition surveys, as well as health literacy surveys, to measure their understanding of health information related to pregnancy and their dietary diversity (the variety of foods in their diet). We will also take the mother’s body measurements, such as their weight and height.

Upon delivery, we’ll collect information about the infant’s birth weight, length, head circumference, gestational age at birth, and APGAR scores (which measure a newborn’s health immediately after birth).

This study has been approved by the relevant authorities at the Yale School of Medicine, the University of Ghana, and the Tamale Teaching Hospital. It has also been registered on ClinicalTrials, a publicly available registry of clinical trials. You may visit the link above to learn more about the project on the clinical trials website.