Effect of guided counseling on dietary practices of pregnant women in West Gojjam Zone, Ethiopia

Background In Ethiopia, although nutrition education has been given during pregnancy, most women have inadequate nutrient intakes. As a result, the prevalence of malnutrition is high during pregnancy. In this study, we set out to evaluate the effect of guided counseling based on the health belief model and the theory of planned behavior on the dietary practices of pregnant women. Methods A two-arm parallel cluster randomized controlled community trial was carried out among pregnant women in West, Gojjam Zone, Ethiopia from May 1, 2018, to April 30, 2019. A total of 346 and 348 pregnant women were recruited from the intervention and control clusters, respectively. Of which endline data were collected from 313 and 332 pregnant women in the intervention and control groups, respectively. Each woman in the intervention group attended four counseling sessions. Women in the control group attended the routine nutrition education given by the health care system. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire. McNemar test and Generalized Estimating Equations were used to evaluate the intervention effect. Results The average difference of appropriate dietary practice between the two groups was 30.7%. After controlling for the possible confounders, women in the intervention group had 7.2 times [AOR = 7.187, 95% CI: (4.49, 11.49)] higher odds of having appropriate dietary practices compared with the control group. Dietary diversity and meal frequency of counseled women were 7 [AOR = 6.994, 95% CI: (4.59, 10.66)] and 8 [AOR = 8.146, 95% CI: (5.377, 12.341)] times higher than dietary diversity and meal frequency of women in the control group, respectively. Conclusion Counseling based on the health belief model and the theory of planned behavior is an effective approach in increasing the proportion of women who had appropriate dietary practices. Thus, these findings suggest the need for employing trimester based counseling using the HBM and the TPB to improve the dietary practices of pregnant women.