"Foods & Pregnancy" is a communication campaign that aims to make pregnant women aware of the microbiological risks related to food consumption and the good hygiene practices with which these risks can be avoided.
The campaign was carried out by theIstituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie (IZSVe) [Italian health authority and research organisation for animal health and food safety in the North-East area of Italy], within the RC IZSVe 02/15 research project funded by the Italian Ministry of Health. The project was carried out in collaboration with the Clinical Dietetics and Nutrition Unit of the Department of Medicine of the University of Padua (Unipd).
The project started with a series of interviews with pregnant women. The objective of these interviews was to carry out a preliminary exploration of the target audience of the campaign.
The interest was to find out both information and beliefs about nutrition reported by women expecting a child, and to have an insight into how nutrition is experienced at this stage and, in general, the pregnancy experience.The project was also based on a statistical survey at national level that traced the knowledge, opinions, beliefs and information needs of pregnant women related to nutrition.
The survey was carried out in CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interviewing) mode and was aimed at women living in Italy, aged between 18 and 45, both pregnant and non-pregnant, to compare any differences in the levels of knowledge on the subject.
With the same purpose, contents retrieved from the main Italian Facebook Groups dedicated to the pregnancy topic were analyzed.
In addition to the statistical survey, qualitative social survey methodologies were also used. In particular, we used the World Cafè technique, a participatory research method that stimulates informal discussion and the recounting of their experiences on topics relevant to people's lives.
Three World Cafés were organised in the Veneto region [North-East Italy], two in Padua and one in Vicenza, where experts, pregnant women and their partners were able to discuss and learn scientific information and points of view on the topic of diet during pregnancy.
The topics that emerged from the social research activity have been deepened and supplemented with scientific information collected from bibliographic research and scientific consultants.
Applying online and offline communication strategies, the information was disclosed through the promotion of the websites www.alimentigravidanza.it (in Italian) and www.foodspregnancy.com (in English), and through multilingual brochures distributed throughout the North-East area of Italy.
Italian version
English version