Results

Background characteristics of participants

A total of 455 children were enrolled in the study, about 60% were 11-12 years of age and 56% were girls. The children were studying in year six (51.9%) or seven (48.1%) during the implementation of the intervention. A total of 413 (90.8%) children participated in both the tests: 419 (92.1%) in the pre-intervention test and 447 (98.2%) in the post-intervention test. IDIs were conducted with seven participating teachers aged 30-45 years.

Intervention compliance

Table 1 shows the attendance rates (percentages) of children in the education sessions. About 71% (86.1% in Belagavi, 64.4% in Raichur and 63.1% in Bagalkot) of the children attended a majority (6-7) of the sessions. Average attendance ranged from 5.7 to 6.3 sessions across the districts.

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Impact of the intervention on knowledge

Baseline or pre-intervention knowledge of several aspects related to anaemia, iron and iron-rich food, IFA supplements and deworming were low, with 13.1% to 46.0% of the respondents providing correct answers to the test questions. A significant increase was seen in the percentage of children who provided correct responses to the questions after the implementation of the intervention. The percentage of children with correct scores increased by 7.3-49.0 percentage points for the tested questions except for Q6_6 where most of the children did not mention ”dates” as a source of iron-rich food (Table 2).