Quality of Community Based Nutrition of Integrated Refresher Training Provided for Health Extension Workers

Improving nutrition contributes to productivity, economic development, and poverty reduction by getting better cognitive development, school performance, physical work capacity, and maintaining health status by reducing morbidity and mortality. Poor nutrition perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Community-Based Nutrition (CBN) is an important component of the National Nutrition Program, designed to build upon the Health Extension Program packages to improve nutritional status of under-five children and pregnant and lactating women. As part of this program shift, CBN training modules have been shortened and incorporated into the Integrated Refresher Training (IRT). The nutrition components of Integrated Refresher Training have not been assessed so far. This study aims to assess the quality of CBN component of integrated refresher training, stakeholder perceptions on the quality of training and change in the knowledge of HEWs. Institutional based cross-sectional study with both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods was used. Four Woredas were chosen purposively from a listing of all woredas receiving IRT module II in Amhara region from June-July 2012. Many MTs and trainees mentioned difficulty of delivering the training as designed due to shortage of time allocated. This was also observed in IRT session