Under nutrition and Associated Factors among Adolescent Pregnant Women in Gomma District, Jimma Zone, Southwestern Ethiopia

Abstract

Background; Addressing undernutrition in adolescent pregnant women can help break the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition where malnourished mothers give birth to malnourished children, perpetuating a cycle of poor health outcomes. In Ethiopia; adolescent pregnancy is common in rural areas of the country due to mainly cultural practices of early marriage and other socio-economic related factor. However, there is a limited research in the study setting concerning the level of undernutrition and associated factors among adolescent pregnant women. Objective; This study aims to assess the prevalence of undernutrition and associated factors among pregnant adolescent women in Gomma district, Jimma Zone, Southwest Ethiopia, 2024 Methods; a community based cross sectional study was conducted on 600 adolescent pregnant women from ten randomly selected rural and two urban kebeles of Gomma district from September to October -1/2024. Data were entered into Epi-Data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 26 for further analysis. Binary logistic regression analysis method was used to show an association between dependent variable and predictor variables. Multivariable binary logistic regression was done to identify factors independently associated with undernutrition among adolescent pregnant women in Gomma district, Jimma Zone. The level of statistical significance will be declared at P < 0.05 with 95%CI and AOR. Results; A total of 588 pregnant adolescent were included in this study with the response rate of 98.0%. This study revealed that the mean and standard deviation age of the study participants were 17.76±1.23 with minimum and maximum age of 15 and 19 respectively. This study revealed that the prevalence of under nutrition among adolescent pregnant women was 206 35.0% (95% CI 31.5-39.3%). In multivariate logistic regression model, intention of pregnancy (AOR=2.03, 95 % CI; 1.31-3.14, p=0.002, frequency of eating meal per-day (AOR=4.59, 95% CI 1.26-16.68, P=0.020), experienced eating problem because of pregnancy (AOR=, 95% CI 1.07-2.51, P=0.005), gestational age, wealth status (AOR=2.90 (1.47-5.73, p=0.002) and dietary diversity score (AOR=2.80, 95% CI; 1.66-4.73, p<0.001) were found to have significant association variables with the occurrence of undernutrition among adolescent pregnant women in Gomma District, Jimma Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia. Conclusion and recommendations; This study revealed that every one out of three adolescent pregnant women was having undernutrition in the study setting. Factors affecting the occurrence of undernutrition were intention of pregnancy, frequency of eating meal per-day, experienced eating problem because of pregnancy, wealth status, gestational age and dietary diversity score. Programs should focus on improving dietary diversity, meal frequency, and early antenatal care while addressing unintended pregnancies, eating problems, and poverty to reduce undernutrition among adolescent pregnant women .