(P22-044-24) Diet Quality Among Mothers and Children in India: Roles of Social and Behavior Change Communication and Nutrition-Sensitive Social Protection Programs

Objectives: Poor diets have been identified as one of major causes of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Limited evidence exists on the relationship of maternal and child diet quality and its determinants. We: 1) examined the agreement between maternal and child diet quality in India and 2) assessed the role of Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) and nutrition-sensitive social protection (NSSP) programs on maternal and child diet quality.

Methods: Maternal and child diet were measured using the Diet Quality Questionnaire (DQQ), a standardized data collection tool for calculating diet quality indicators, including dietary diversity scores (DDS), non-communicable disease (NCD)-Protect and NCD-Risk. The agreement between mother-child diet was assessed by Cohen’s Kappa coefficient with an unweighted ordinal approach. Multivariate regression models were used to explore the association between diet indicators and coverage of SBCC and NSSP programs.

Results: Overall, children’s consumption across all food groups was low compared to mothers, with fair to moderate agreement (κ statistic = 0.21–0.60). Significant associations were observed between maternal and child diet quality: β=0.35 (95%CI: 0.33, 0.37) for DDS, 0.43 (95%CI: 0.40, 0.45) for NCD-Protect, and 0.21 (95%CI: 0.19, 0.22) for NCD-Risk. SBCC was positively correlated with consumption of healthy foods in both mothers (β= 0.38 for DDS and 0.43 for NCD-Protect) and children (β= 0.60 and 0.54, respectively), but had no discernible association with the consumption of unhealthy foods. Receipt of cash increased consumption of both healthy (β= 0.43 for DDS and 0.26 for NCD-Protect) and unhealthy foods (β= 0.10 for DDS for NCD-Risk) for mothers, whereas it was associated only with greater healthy food consumption for children (β= 0.14 for NCD-Protect). Receiving food as positively associated with only healthy food consumption for mothers (β= 0.27 for DDS and 0.33 for NCD-Protect), but it exhibited a positive correlation with both healthy and unhealthy food consumption for children (β from 0.11 to 0.19).

Conclusions: Our study revealed a distinct association of cash and food transfers on maternal and child diet quality and suggested the need for a more holistic approach on SBCC covering both healthy and unhealthy foods for mothers and children.

Funding Sources: CGIAR Trust Fund through TAFSSA