Designing, Developing and Deploying Smart Nutrition Education Intervention to Promote Nutrition Related Knowledge among School Children: A Cluster Randomized Control Trial

Introduction: School-children undergo rapid growth with high nutritional needs. Adequate nutritionalknowledge promotes healthy eating making nutrition-education essential. This study assessed the impact of a digital platform-based smart nutrition-education intervention on nutritional-knowledge among 10-14-year-old school-children in Mangalore. Methods: The study was conducted in five private schools with 596 children equally assigned to intervention and control-clusters (n=298 each). An orientation preceded baseline assessment. Intervention-cluster received a six-month digital program with two educational videos per month on nutrition, diet-planning, physical-activity, lifestyle, and personal-hygiene. Data were collected at baseline, post-intervention and six-month follow-up; control-cluster were assessed at baseline and follow-up. Within-group differences were analyzed using Friedman/Wilcoxon (Bonferroni) test, between-group Mann-Whitney U test with effect sizes Kendall’s W and r. Analyses were performed in SPSS 27 (p<0.05). Results: At baseline, median nutritional-knowledge scores across all topics were similar between intervention and control-clusters with negligible effect-sizes (r) 0.001-0.024 and p>0.05. The intervention-cluster showed significant improvements across pre-test, post-test and follow-up (p<0.001) with pre-test to post-test (r=0.86-0.89) and pre-test to follow-up (r=0.84-0.89); a small decline from post-test to follow-up (r=0.20-0.62). The control-cluster showed no significant change (r=0.03-0.08, p>0.05). At follow-up intervention-cluster scored higher than controls across most topics (r=0.05-0.35, p<0.05) except “The food group system and its importance” (r=0.051, p=0.210). Conclusions: The digital platform-based intervention significantly improved and sustained nutritional-knowledge among school-children. Its cost-effective, accessible and user-friendly design enables integration into educational systems, adaptation to other health programs and may support therapeutic dietary strategies. Future research should assess its translation into behavioural and health outcomes.