Assessment of dietary diversity and associated factors among lactating mothers in Debub Bench District

To identify dietary diversity and its associated factors among lactating women in the Debub Bench district.

Cross-sectional study design was conducted among 836 lactating women from January 1st to March 31st, 2019, in Debub Bench district. The outcome variable of the study was determined based on the proportion of lactating mothers who fed less than five major food groups to mothers who fed more than five major food groups out of nine (9) food groups. Lactating mothers who fed less than five of the major food groups were categorized under unacceptable dietary diversity. Data were first collected through face-to-face interviews by validated structured questionerers and then entered in Epi-data version 4.6.0.2 software. A bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis were later conducted using IBM SPSS version 26 software. During the analysis, multicollinearity was check by using the tolerance test and variance inflation factors (VIF), Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness of fit test was used to see model fitness, and adjusted odds ratios and their 95% confidence interval at P values ≤0.05 were considered to determine statistically significant factors.

A total of 836 lactating mothers had participated in the study. The response rate was 91.26%. The mean age of the participants was 29 years (SD ± 6.7). The study found that the magnitude of unacceptable dietary diversity score was 72.4% (95% CI: 69.5-75.5). The study also found that factors such as nutrition information (OR = 4, 95% CI: 2.64-6.08), absence of garden (OR = 2.35, 95% CI: 1.19-4.61), absence of latrine (OR = 6.86, 95% CI: 3.26-14.56) and household food insecurity (OR = 5.23, 95% CI: 3.64-7.46) were significantly associated with unacceptable dietary diversity.

The finding of this study showed that information about nutrition, absence of latrine, absence of garden, and household food insecurity were significantly associated with dietary diversity. Based on the finding of the study, the following recommendations are made. First, strategies and programs targeted towards promoting dietary diversity and good health among lactating women should be made at all levels. Second, lactating mothers should be adequately provided with nutritional information. Three, mothers should be empowered to alleviate household food insecurity by leveraging their premises for gardening diversified and nutritious vegetables.