Indonesian antenatal nutrition education: A qualitative study of healthcare professional views

<jats:sec><jats:title>Background:</jats:title><jats:p> Early lifestyle intervention, including antenatal nutrition education, is required to reduce the triple burden of malnutrition. Understanding healthcare professionals’ views and experiences is essential for improving future nutrition education programmes for Indonesian pregnant women. This study aimed to investigate the views of Indonesian antenatal healthcare professionals regarding nutrition education for pregnant women and the improvements required to provide more effective antenatal nutrition education. </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Methods:</jats:title><jats:p> A descriptive qualitative study involved semi-structured interviews was conducted with 24 healthcare professionals, including nutritionists ( n = 10), midwives ( n = 9) and obstetricians ( n = 5) in Malang, Indonesia, between December 2018 and January 2019. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Results:</jats:title><jats:p> The study identified four main themes. First, healthcare professionals were aware of the importance of providing antenatal nutrition education, which included supporting its targeted delivery. Second, there were differing views on who should provide nutrition education. Most midwives and obstetricians viewed nutritionists as the prime nutrition education provider. Nutritionists were confident in their capability to provide nutrition education. However, some nutritionists reported that only a few women visited primary health centres and received nutrition counselling via this pathway. Third, healthcare professionals revealed some barriers in providing education for women. These barriers included a limited number of nutritionists, lack of consistent guidelines, lack of healthcare professionals’ nutrition knowledge and lack of time during antenatal care services. Fourth, participants expressed the need to strengthen some