Stakeholders urged to support digital communication to address malnutrition challenges

Professor Robert Darko Osei, the Research Project Lead of Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research  (ISSER) has urged stakeholders to support digital communication technologies to  address malnutrition in rural areas.

He said there was a huge gain and potentials in using digital communication to effect changes in nutrition behaviour among poor households.

Professor Osei said this during a stakeholders engagement workshop on findings of a three-year  research project in four Northern Regions titled:  ” Using Digital Communication to Reinforce Nutrition and Household Resilience in Northern Ghana”.

The workshop educated on findings of the research aimed to assess whether digital communication can be deployed for rural education on nutrition and health and its impact on household behaviours.

This research project led by the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana, Legon, is part of USAID funded collaborative research grant programme between Feed the future innovation laboratory for markets, risks and resilience under the USAID and the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED).

It sought to understand how using an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) messages as a mode of communicating nutrition and WASH educational content to rural to change behaviours in rural households for positive nutrition and health outcomes among the rural poor in Northern Ghana.

“After conducting research fieldwork over 3 years across four northern regions within 232 rural communities, the research project has found policy-relevant results,” Professor Osei added.

He indicated that malnutrition continues to be a public health challenge especially in the Northern sector which need the attention of all stakeholders to address the challenge.

According to Professor, Osei nutrition, health and sanitation are important component of livelihoods approach to tackle inequality, poverty and deprivation.

He appealed to stakeholders to practice nutrition education in the local languages to improve health-related knowledge, attitudes and practices in rural areas.

Dr. Charles Yaw Okyere, who is part of the project Team said, the research found that at baseline,  stunting is about 17.5 percent, Wasting is six percent and under weights is about 12.3 percent according to 2022 Demographic and Health Survey.

According to him, malnutrition affected child educational outcomes and was more pronounced in the Northern regions of Ghana.

He stated that in the research 30 percent of the Households studied had a poor food consumption score.

Dr. Fidela Dake, a team member of Research project said, so far the project has impacted positively on nutrition outcomes and self reported health after six months of sending messages to beneficiary households.

She added that these messages, communicated through the IVR platform has changed nutrition and WASH perception among household and now more people take hand washing and boiling of water before drinking as key health tools.

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