Concordancia entre la percepción materna y el estado nutricional de sus hijos antes y después de una intervención educativa

Abstract

Overnutrition is a health problem and its rapid diagnosis through maternal perception (MP), allows for early intervention focused on reducing consequences and associated costs. The objective of this study was to determine the concordance between MP and child’s nutritional status, before and after an educational intervention. Participants were 116 mother-child (2 to 5 years old) dyads from, from 4 daycare centers in Viña del Mar, Chile. Nutritional status was determined and MP was performed using children’s body images. Subsequently 57 mothers with MP discordant with child’s nutritional status participated in a 40-minute educational intervention every 15 days for 3 months. Concordance between MP and child’s nutritional status was evaluated with Kappa. Nutritional status of the 116 children was: 3.4% underweight; 49.1% normal; 28.4% overweight, 19.0% obesity. MP indicated that 99.1% underestimated their child’s nutritional status (Kappa = 0.022 and p= 0.610). After intervention, MP improved to 59.6% and 40.3% continued to underestimating child’s nutritional status (kappa= 0.362 and p= 0.000). In this study, mothers tended to underestimate the nutritional status of their children. An educational intervention improved MP and the agreement between MP and child’s nutritional status.