Digital communication, key in addressing malnutrition challenges-ISSER 

Professor Robert Darko Osei, the Research Project Lead of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana, has urged stakeholders to support digital communication technologies to address malnutrition in rural areas.He said there was a huge gain and potential in using digital communication to effect changes in nutritional 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 participants on the findings of the research, which aimed to assess whether digital communication could be deployed for rural education on nutrition and health and its impact on household behaviours.This research project, led by ISSER is part of a USAID-funded collaborative research grant programme between Feed the Future Innovation Laboratory for Market s, 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) message as a mode of communicating nutrition and water, sanitation, and hygiene educational content to rural communities to change behaviours in rural households for positive nutrition and health outcomes among the rural poor in Northern Ghana.'After conducting research fieldwork over three years across four northern regions within 232 rural communities, the research project has found policy-relevant results,' Professor Osei added.He indicated that malnutrition was a public health challenge, especially in the Northern sector, which needed the attention of all stakeholders to address it. According to Professor Osei, nutrition, health and sanitation were important components of the livelihoods approach to tackle inequality, poverty, and deprivation. He appealed to stakeholders to practice nutrition education in the local langu ages 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 per cent, Wasting is six per cent and underweight is about 12.3 per cent according to the 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 the Research project said so far, the project had 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 had changed nutrition and WASH perception among households and now more people took hand washing and boiling of water before drinking as key health tools.Source: Ghana News Agency