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Childhood overweight and obesity due to unhealthy diet result in several adverse effects. Mothers play a major role in selecting snacks for younger children. This study assessed the factors associated with the choice of packaged food/beverage snacks among mothers of 6- to 10-year-old children in the Medical Officer of Health area Balangoda. A community-based descriptive cross-sectional study with an analytical component was conducted in 2022 among 450 mothers with 6- to 10-year-old children through two-stage, stratified (year of birth considered as a stratum), simple random sampling technique in ten randomly selected Public Health Midwife areas in the medical officer of health area Balangoda. An interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to assess participants' sociodemographic, usual practices, attitudes, and knowledge toward packaged snacks. Factors associated with maternal practices related to packaged snack selection were assessed through the chi-square test at the p<0.05 significance level. The response rate was 99.3% (N = 447). Children were commonly provided with biscuits (94.4%) and flavoured milk (44.7%) daily (66.4%) at home (93.5%). The majority of mothers reported poor practices in selecting packaged snacks (88.8%), but good knowledge (62.9%) and favorable attitudes (93.5%) toward packaged snacks. The majority (75.5%) were aware that snacks are important for overcoming the hunger gap among children. Childs' preference (77.6%) was the leading influencing factor while, the nutritional value of the packaged snacks minimally influenced the maternal (2.7%) choice. Only 49.9% mothers knew that packaged fruits could be consumed as snacks. Maternal Sinhalese ethnicity (p<0.001), secondary or higher education (p<0.001), having one child (p = 0.003), residing in a rural or urban area (p = 0.011) and having favourable attitudes (p = 0.002) were significantly associated with poor maternal practices in packaged snack selection. Although mothers' knowledge toward packaged snacks were good, their practices in selecting packaged snacks were poor. Maternal ethnicity, educational level, number of children, area of residence and attitudes were significantly associated with mothers' selection of packaged snacks. The results of the study highlighted the need to plan, develop and implement focused health promotion programmes to empower mothers to select healthier packaged snack options for their 6- to 10-year-old children., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Pujitha Gunawardhana, Talagala. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: Health policies form the foundation for provisioning best level care and are important for all stakeholders including patients and healthcare providers. Health policy analysis and evaluation allows policy makers to improve an existing policy, terminate a non-effective policy and to successfully implement future policies.The objective was to assess the coherence between the two local policy documents on NCD prevention and control in Sri Lanka, the national NCD policy (NCD policy) and the multisectoral action plan (MSAP), and to assess the consistency of MSAP with the global action plan for NCDs., Methods: The content analysis of the NCD policy and MSAP of Sri Lanka was conducted based on the modified criteria developed to the 'Analysis of determinants of policy impact' model, by two reviewers independently. Coherence between MSAP and the global NCD action plan were also assessed by two reviewers independently. Consensus for discrepancy was achieved through discussion., Results: Accessibility was the strongest criteria for the NCD policy, while, resources and obligations were the weakest. Goals and monitoring and evaluation criteria were the strongest in the MSAP. Requirement for improvement were identified in policy background, goals, monitoring and evaluation, and public opportunities for the NCD policy. Accessibility, policy background, resources, public opportunities and obligations require further improvement in the MSAP. The MSAP is well coherent with the global road map for NCD prevention and control., Conclusion: Policy documents related to NCD prevention and control in Sri Lanka are coherent with the global action plan, while, there are areas within the local policy documents that need to be improved to enhance the coherence between the local documents. Lessons learnt by this activity need to be utilized by Sri Lanka and other countries to improve the uniformity between the NCD policy documents within the country as well as internationally., Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed., (Copyright: © 2024 Talagala I et al.)