Abstract:
Background: Vitamin D Deficiency in children is a worldwide health problem. Yet, there is little known about awareness of parents regarding this issue in Jordan. The recent study aimed to assess the mothers’ knowledge and practices toward vitamin D deficiency in infants and up to age of 6 years.
Methods: an online questionnaire was distributed as Google Form on mothers of children between 0-6 yeas, assessing their knowledge about vitamin D, its deficiency, and their practices toward vitamin D deficiency for their children, Descriptive statistics and Chi-Square test were performed.
Results: Most of mothers (64.8%) were aged between 30-40 years, and had education level of Bachelor’s degree (63.3%). Sunlight was considered the main source of vitamin D (89.1%), while fish and eggs were the main dietary sources (63.5%, 65.5%, respectively). Vitamin D was considered important for bone and teeth health (93.9%). The majority of participants reported lack of sun exposure and decreased vitamin D rich foods as risk factors and rickets as complication of vitamin D deficiency (98.5%, 96.4%, 89.3%, respectively).
Most of mothers (65.1%) indicated the time before 10 AM as the best time of day to expose baby/child to the sun. The majority of participants (82.2%) believe that vitamin D deficiency is a common health problem in children in our country, and 86.4% think they need more information on vitamin D deficiency in children. Age, nationality, nature of housing, and age group of children had an impact on knowledge’s level of participants.
Conclusion: Most of participants were aware of vitamin D sources, benefits, risk factors and complications of deficiency, although there was inadequate knowledge among respondents was found in certain domains of vitamin D. More education is required for mothers about vitamin D and its deficiency.
Keywords : Vitamin D; awareness; deficiency; knowledge.
What is already known about this topic?
  1. Vitamin D deficiency is a common global health problem among different age groups.
  2. Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent in Jordan among children.
  3. Little is known about awareness of parents in Jordan regarding vitamin D deficiency in children.
What does this article add?
This study assessed the mother’s knowledge and practices toward vitamin D deficiency in infants and up to age of 6 years in Jordan.
The result of this study concluded that the Jordanian mothers had inadequate level of knowledge in certain domains of vitamin D such as some dietary sources, risk factors and complications of deficiency in addition to some practices undertaken by participants