Dietary Diversity and Associated Factors Among Pregnant Women in Lemo Woreda, Hadiya Zone, Central Ethiopia: Comparative Cross-Sectional Study

During pregnancy, a woman needs good nutrition for a healthy birth outcome. Besides, the need for nutrients dramatically increases more during pregnancy than at any other stage in the woman’s life. However, nutrient deficiencies and imbalanced dietary intake occur during the reproductive period in urban and rural women in both developing and developed nations. Nevertheless, there is a lack of information on dietary diversity among urban and rural pregnant women in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study was designed with the objectives of comparing the dietary diversity among pregnant women between urban and rural areas, and to identify associated factors in Lemo Woreda, Hadiya Zone, Central Ethiopia. A community-based comparative cross-sectional study was conducted on 429 pregnant women in urban and rural areas of Lemo Woreda, Hadiya Zone in July 2021. The collected data was entered in Epi data version 3.1, and exported to SPSS version 20 for analysis. Binary and multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify factors associated with the dietary diversity practice of pregnant mothers. P-value ≤0.05 was considered as statically significant. The proportion of pregnant women who had adequate dietary diversity practice was 35.9%. There was no statistical difference between urban and rural pregnant women in dietary diversity practice. Age (AOR=0.44, 95% CI: 0.20-0.98), family size (AOR=1.886, 95%CI: 1.094-3.250), occupation (AOR=3.30, 95%CI: 1.002-10.873) and household food security (AOR=5.0, 95%CI: 2.919-8.594) independently predicted dietary diversity practice. The prevalence of adequate dietary diversity among pregnant women was low. Therefore, interventions on household food security, women's occupations, and promoting family planning may improve the dietary diversity among pregnant women in the study areas.