The Quality Diets for Better Health (QDBH) project is an Activity carried out by the International Potato Center (PIN), People in Need (PIN) and Emory University between 2017 and 2021 in the Sidama and Gedeo Zones in the South of Ethiopia. The project is financed by the European Union and aims at reaching 15,000 rural households with orange-fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP) and nutrition education, and serving at least 61,000 urban consumers with fresh OFSP roots or with processed food that includes OFSP as an ingredient. It has supported research by students from Hawassa University on agriculture and nutrition related topics.
As part of this collaboration an experiment was carried out to measure the impact of validated leaflets with information about the nutritional benefits of OFSP on consumers’ knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP).
This experiment involved twenty vegetable retailers in Hawassa and their customers. During eight weeks, ten retailers in Hawassa received OFSP roots and leaflets with relevant information to hand out to their customers (treatment); the other ten only received roots (control). At the start and at the end of the experiment, five trained enumerators interviewed 632 customers by telephone using a standardized questionnaire. The study measured KAP scores at the beginning and the end of the trial. Initially, there was no statistically significant difference between both treatment arms. At the end, there was a significant improvement of KAP scores among those who received the leaflets compared with the start and with the control group, highlighting the potential of the dissemination of written material among urban consumers as a means to increase the demand for OFSP and to improve the intake of vitamin A.