Impact of nutrition education on knowledge and attitude of women health volunteers in Southern Khorasan Province

Background: A healthy nutritional diet is part of a healthy lifestyle. According to the US Department of Agriculture, proper nutrition can reduce mortality from heart disease by 25 percent, death from cancer, respiratory and infectious diseases by 20 percent, and from diabetes by 50 percent. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of nutrition education on knowledge and attitude of women health volunteers in Southern Khorasan Province. Methods: This quasi-experimental study was performed on 101 women health volunteers in Southern Khorasan Province. Knowledge and attitudes of the women health volunteers were assessed before and 2 months after the intervention by a standard questionnaire whose validity and reliability were confirmed. The intervention consisted of a 2-day workshop held in the health center of Birjand. The data were analyzed in SPSS software (version 16) using paired t test. The significance level was set at p 0.05. Results: The mean score of knowledge was 17.47±2.67 before the intervention, which increased to 18.47±2.04 after intervention with the difference being statistically significant (p=0.02). Attitude scores were 40.39±2.62 and 40.41±3.18 before and after intervention respectively, where the increase was not statistically significant (p 0.05). Conclusions: This study shows that nutrition education, even in the form of a short-term training workshop, can enhance the knowledge of women health volunteers. Recommendation is to perform the education by nutrition experts periodically and through continued education programs.