Dietary interventions trials in pregnancy that can be embedded in ante-natal care are needed urgently to avert diet-related adverse maternal-infant health outcomes and improve the nation’s health. We piloted an antenatal nutrition intervention that proved feasible and acceptable but the nutrition and dietary assessment aspect was time and resource intensive. We have now developed an automated assessment of diet and can system-generate individually-tailored food and nutrient feedback reports in real-time. This means the dietetic consults could be brief but more targeted and focus on behaviour change strategies to address the report recommendations from the automated Australian Eating Survey. Women told us they want this advice from qualified health professionals, delivered in a personalised but convenient way. Our long-term goal is to attract major funding to build a web-platform with the capacity to integrate real-time assessment of nutrient intakes as part of antenatal medical nutrition therapy and test its acceptability. This would generate new knowledge on the impact of dietary change on maternal and infant health.
Hypothesis: Providing pregnant women with a personalised medical nutrition intervention that delivers real-time feedback plus counselling from an Accredited Practising Dietitian, will reduce adverse birth outcomes for women and their babies.
Prof Clare Collins, Dr Lee Ashton