P200 The Evaluation of Mobile Teaching Kitchens as a Nutrition Education Tool to Improve Health Outcomes in Underserved Communities

Background The NNEdPro Core Team, Bhavishya Shakti Researchers and Inner Wheel Club of Greater Calcutta launched Mobile Teaching Kitchens as a nutritional education tool in two Indian slums in February 2018 to improve awareness of diet diversity and disease prevention by using locally sourced foods and cooking skills. Local volunteers, trained in healthy cooking, transferred core nutritional principals by cooking sustainable, nutritional and affordable meals. They followed a “See one, Do one and Teach one” model to transfer knowledge to their peers where markers of malnutrition were assessed before and after this programme. Objective To evaluate the efficacy of using mobile teaching kitchens to provide nutrition education through cooking, teaching healthy eating to a disadvantaged community in the urban slums of India. Study Design, Settings, Participants Longitudinal evaluation of mothers and children in RG Kar Canal Slum and Chetla Slum in Kolkata, India from 2018 to 2019. Measurable Outcome/Analysis Anthropometric and clinical signs of the children were assessed in person, alongside assessment of knowledge, attitudes and practice of the mothers through questionnaires. Results Preliminary measurements post-analysis from both slums (n = 14) showed that overall anthropometric measures of health in the mothers remained static. There was a mean change of 2.75cm growth in height in children. Other markers of nutritional status such as weight and mid-upper arm circumference did not significantly change. Statistically significant changes were seen in self-perceived nutritional knowledge about dietary protein sources, where the median response increased from 2 to 3 out of 5 (5 indicating excellent understanding) ( P Conclusion Overall improvement in clinical status and nutritional knowledge was seen using Mobile Teaching Kitchens as an educational tool. Further evaluation of this particular teaching method is warranted due to the small sample size and heterogeneous results. Funding British Medical Association (BMA), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN), The British Dietetics Association (BDA), University of Cambridge.