ARELLANO, Leslie A.

GUAB, Louise Angelica

HNF 124 A-3L

EXERCISE 5
Evaluation of the Nutrition Education Program

I. Objectives
At the end of the exercise, students were able to:

1. identify the strengths and limitations of the different nutrition education programs;
2. critique a specific nutrition education program; and
3. recommend measures to strengthen the nutrition education program.
II. Discussion

IAP HealthPhone (India)

IAP HealthPhone is a nutrition program launched in India by the Indian Academy of

Pediatrics and HealthPhone, this is in partnership with the Ministry of Women and Child
Development, UNICEF, and support from Vodafone. It is known as the World’s Largest
Program to battle malnutrition among mothers and children.

a. Contents of the Program

The nutrition education program mainly composed of four videos from the Poshan
series. The videos address the maternal and child health nutrition such as the care of pregnant
women and children under two, exclusive breastfeeding, balance diet, and proper and
appropriate nutrition practices.

As shown in the videos from the HealthPhone program are these four key messages in
combatting malnutrition:

1. correct diet for expecting mothers and quarter portions more than usual

2. mother's first milk is the best, make sure the child gets it

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 3. for first 6 months, feed the child only mother's milk and nothing else, not even water;
and

4. upon entering 7th month, balance mother's milk with a nutritious diversified diet.

Since majority of the women in India do not follow right nutrition practices, the
HealthPhone aids in providing them education to improve their child’s nutritional status and
health. The programs also provide knowledge to mothers regarding nutrition such as (1)
colostrum, the first mother’s milk after birth, should be given to the baby because it prepares
the child’s digestive system and provides nutrients essential for the growth of the baby such as
zinc, calcium, and vitamins, as well as antibodies that give the child immunity, (2) exclusive
breastfeeding for the first 6 months should be followed because it reduces infant mortality and
protects the baby from illnesses, and (3) complementary foods should be given on the seventh
month, since breastmilk alone, cannot provide all the nutritional needs of the baby, thus, an
adequate, frequent and appropriate feeding practices should be given.

b. Problem

In India, malnutrition victimizes children of India every second. Malnourished children

tend to be physically and mentally weak because of their susceptibility to ailments, deformities,
disabilities, and allergies. Generally, malnutrition causes a delay or impairment in a child’s
normal growth. Malnutrition may also be due to inadequate intake, diseases, and improper care
given to child. Thus, there is a need to provide adequate nutrients through exclusive
breastfeeding and right complementary feeding practices.

Data shows that the prevalence of malnutrition in India is high, about half of the
children are malnourished and a million of them die even before reaching their first month.
Malnourished children in India are either too short for their age or too thin, with a massive
number of 30 million children each form of malnutrition mentioned.

The number of adolescent mothers in India are increasing, and data shows that 56,000
pregnant women die during childbirth in a year. The forms of malnutrition or deficiencies occur
in mothers are underweight (36%), iron deficiency anemia (56% women and 56% adolescent
girls), and undernourished (half of adolescent girls between 15-19 years old). Among children

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in India, the prevalence of low birth weight is 22%, underweight among 0 to 5 years old is
42%, iron deficiency between 6 to 35 months is 79%, and underweight is 50%.

Thus, malnutrition should be addressed locally and nationwide in India, and

HealthPhone advocates to teach, promote, and inspire women and/or mothers to practice proper
nutrition among themselves and their children.

c. Objective

HealthPhone addresses the challenge of malnutrition in mothers and children at the

national level of India. Its advocacy is to educate 6 million girls and women between 13 and
35 years of age, as well as their families, regarding practices to improve their health and
nutrition by the year 2018. Women, specifically mothers, are taught of proper way of feeding
their child to prevent malnutrition. Specifically, the nutrition campaign aims to:

1. address issues of status of women;

2. the care of pregnant mothers and children under two

3. breastfeeding; and

4. the importance of balanced nutrition and health.

d. Target audience

The main target of HealthPhone are mothers and children since they are the ones more
susceptible to malnutrition, especially children. Malnutrition during the pregnancy of the
mother, may affect the child is carrying, thus, good nutrition plays an important role even
during pregnancy. Moreover, proper nutritional care should be also given to the child, before,
during, and most importantly, after pregnancy. The minute the child is delivered, mother and
baby bond should be started to build, and early initiation of breastfeeding should be promoted.

e. Nutrition education and health promotion strategies

The HealthPhone is 3-year campaign promoted using the mass media because they aim
to address nutrition practices in the whole India. With the use of mobile phones, 23 million
women will be educated by the target year of 2018. The nutrition education is focused on
women between 13 to 35 of age, along with their family members. If this population is reached,
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approximately 60 million children in India before the year 2025 will be given proper nutritional
care. The promotion will be done by sending 300 million text messages every year to the
population of India who are subscribers of the Vodafone network.

f. Nutrition education and health promotion theories and models applied

Knowledge-Attitude-Behavior Model “proposes that as people acquire knowledge in

the nutrition and health areas, their attitudes change, which then lead to changes in behavior”.
The main motivator is assumed to be accumulation of knowledge. to provide the intended
audience with new information about nutrition or health, with the assumption that this
information will lead to changes in attitudes, which in turn will result in improved dietary
behavior or practices.

The nutrition program used the power of telecommunication as a platform that increase
information dissemination to level up heights of awareness among the phone users. This in turn
would impart knowledge that is necessary for those already motivated to eat healthfully or who
perceive some personal health risk to create dietary behavior as well as practices to prevent
widespread of malnutrition and mortality rates of both mother and children in India. They also
made use of the motivational knowledge that is about emphasizing some of the health risks of
not abiding to the identified interventions as well as the possible benefits they could acquire.

Since the focus of the program is in India, one of the theories that is applied is the Social
Psychological Theories of Health Behavior and Behavioral Change that emphasize that the
function of social psychology that is to understand the relationships between an individual and
his/her social environment. The program laid an understanding of how thoughts, feelings, and
values affect nutrition-related choices and behaviors; and with how the interactions with others
and with the social environment can influence how one behaves. Rather than imposing them
of the things that they must do, they facilitated an individuals’ voluntary adoption of healthful
behaviors by helping increase awareness and reduce barriers to action, both personal and
environmental.

g. Strengths and limitations of the program/strategies

One of the major strengths of the program is their utilization of the modern means of
communication which is the multimedia platform. They are in partnership with a

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telecommunication company which actually posed an advantage of massive information
dissemination among their target audience. The spread of information is widespread and easily
done as well as facilitated. The use of these forms of information dissemination may be
widespread however, this can also be a disadvantage since the widespread information
dissemination also requires monitoring and evaluation regarding the effectiveness of their
program. This will be very expensive as well as the maintenance of this said program. This
requires a continuous support among the local and the private organizations for it to reach its
goal. Also, the way one perceives knowledge and the interpretation as well as the application
is not just limited to creating awareness, they also need resources in order to effectively sustain
and start change. The program may be a very good foundation of increasing awareness but
there is still the need to reach the affected people in the physical sense, not just in the virtual.
Reality is a different thing.

Though utilization of the social media platform is rampant, not everyone has a good
access to mobile phones that are capable of surfing the need, also internet connection is needed.
If this platform is to be utilized, there is a need for almost everyone of their target population
to have access on smartphones and even a moderate or high-speed internet connection.

h. Overall evaluation of the program

The program provides a good foundation of increasing the heights of awareness by

utilization of the modern platform of communication which is through the social media,
smartphones and the like. This is an expensive program that requires heavy maintenance and
frequent information update to create consistency in widespread mass knowledge
dissemination. Also, thorough support from huge and multi-billion-dollar companies must
continue to create their charity work by aiding their services to reach millions of their target
population.

i.Recommendations

In line with their massive entry of information dissemination in the internet and
telecommunication realm, it is recommended if possible to increase their areas of concern and
not just to be limited in the aforementioned issues. They should also make sure that their target
audience were able to view their videos as well as understand by creating some form of a
mobile interactive application that will be able to assess and evaluate if they learned something
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 from the information they disseminated. Also, it will also be of greater help if they were able
to sustain the program by providing arrangement to more non-profit, profit, local, government
and private entities to support their goal. In that means, more people will be encouraged and
be curious of what they should do to create a healthy community that is within reach in their
homes.

III. Reference

Poshan | Nutrition, Food, Poverty, Malnutrition, Undernourishment, Obesity, Overweight | IAP

HealthPhoneTM Nutrition Education Programme for Mothers and Children. (n.d.). Retrieved
December 7, 2017, from http://iap.healthphone.org/index.html

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