Dietary diversity and associated factors among adolescent girls in Nifas Silk Laphto sub city, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2021

BACKGROUND: Addressing the nutritional problems of adolescent girls is important as their nutritional status has a negative effect on the future generation. However, the evidence revealed the variation and unrelated data on the prevalence of dietary diversity and lack of including all adolescent age and community groups in Ethiopia. Hence, this study assessed dietary diversity and associated factors among adolescent girls in Nifas Silk Laphto Sub-city, Addis Ababa Ethiopia, 2021. METHODS: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 475 adolescent girls at Nifas Silk Laphto sub-city, Addis Ababa Ethiopia from July 1 to 30, 2021. Multistage cluster sampling was employed to select adolescent girls. Pretested questionnaires were used to collect the data. The data were checked for completeness and entered by Epidata version 3.1 and cleaned and analyzed by SPSS version 21.0. A multivariable binary logistic regression model was fitted to identify factors associated with dietary diversity scores. The degree of association was assessed using an odds ratio with a 95% confidence interval and variables with p-value ≤ 0.05 were considered significant. RESULT: The mean and the standard deviation of dietary diversity scores were 4.70 and 1.21 respectively. The proportion of low dietary diversity scores among adolescent girls was 77.2%. Adolescent girls’ age, meal frequency, wealth index of household, and food insecurity were significant determinants of dietary diversity score. CONCLUSION: The magnitude of low dietary diversity scores was significantly higher in the study area. Adolescent girls’, meal frequency, wealth index, and food security status were predictors of dietary diversity score. School-based nutrition education and counseling and designing strategies for improving household food security programs are crucial.