Evaluation of Knowledge and Attitude towards breast feeding and growth monitoring practices among Anganwadi workers in Rural Field Practice Area.

Dhoble S; Kubde S

Volume : V, Issue : II, February - 2016

Evaluation of Knowledge and Attitude towards breast feeding and growth monitoring practices among Anganwadi workers in Rural Field Practice Area.

Dhoble S, Kubde S

Abstract :

 Today Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) represents one of the world’s largest programmes for early childhood development. The main objective of this programme is to cater to the needs of the development of children in the age group 0–6 years. The Anganwadi worker is the community based front line voluntary worker of the ICDS programme. Objectives: 1) To assess the knowledge and attitude about the aspects of east feeding and growth monitoring practices. 2) To find the gap in the knowledge and fill it by educational intervention. Materials and methods: This is an educational interventional study conducted in rural field practice area of tertiary care hospital in Mumbai. A predesigned proforma was used to obtain the information about east feeding and growth monitoring practices after obtaining consent to participate in the study. After obtaining the data, it was tabulated in Microsoft excel. Scoring was done to assess the knowledge. Later, education was given regarding east feeding and growth monitoring issues to them, and post test was conducted using the same proforma, then tabulated and analysed. Results: 68 Anganwadi workers participated in our study with the majority in the 31–40 years of age. 58.82% were educated up to 10th standard and 52 (76.47%) workers were trained with 41 (60.29%) had an experience < 10 years. Pre–test score was good (18–25) in 3 participants. The score was good in 17 participants after education intervention. The change in knowledge was found to be statistically highly significant (p = 0.000). Conclusion: The study shows that education intervention improves the knowledge of AWW who are the key persons to promote good practices in her area and hence their knowledge should be upgraded with regular training programme.