Abstract

Background: Adolescence is a window of opportunity to rectify nutritional deficiencies. Nonetheless, to improve dietary behaviors and nutritional status of adolescents, it is essential to design sustainable and effective nutrition interventions.
Objective: To design, implement and evaluate impact of interventions based on the intervention mapping/ IM model, on iron rich food/IRF consumption among Senegalese adolescent girls.
Methods: Experimental design targeting girls aged 13-18 from two colleges in the city of Dakar with one college receiving interventions (EC) and the other serving as a control (CC). Interventions included one nutrition education session, four cooking and recipe sharing sessions and a six-week subsidy to a local vendor for offering affordable IRF. Daily consumption of IRF among adolescents in both colleges, as well as individual and environmental factors that might influence it, were measured before and after interventions.
Results: After interventions, the proportion of girls in EC who no longer perceived that consuming IRF caused weight gain increased by about 25% (p=0.001), as did the proportion who felt able to consume at least 85g of IRF/day even if they were not able to prepare IRF themselves (p=0.040). As compared to before interventions (65%), a lower proportion of girls in EC perceived the price of IRF as a barrier to their daily consumption after interventions (24%, p<0.001). In EC, after interventions, the average daily consumption of IRF increased by approximately 25g (p<0.001) while no change was observed in CC (p=0.559).
Conclusion: Interventions based on IM targeting individual and environmental factors could be relevant for improving IRF consumption of Senegalese adolescent girls.

Keywords:Iron-rich foods; Intervention mapping; Theory of planned behavior; Adolescent girls; Individual and environmental factors; Senegal