Health education program for mothers of children suffering from iron deficiency anemia in United Arab Emirates.

The present study was designed to assess knowledge, beliefs and practices of mothers regarding factors leading to iron deficiency anemia among children, to develop a health education (HE) program according to the needs of the target group, to determine the effect of the program in terms of changes in mothers' knowledge, practices and beliefs using Health Belief Model (HBM), and to determine the hemoglobin and hematocrite levels of the children of the target group before and after the program. The sample size was 200 anemic children aged 6-24 months and their mothers, 100 of them were randomly assigned to face to face intervention program (experimental group) (I), the other 100 were the control group (II). Only 16% of mothers of group I and 18% of mothers of group II got satisfactory level of knowledge.