Journal of nutrition education最新文献

Objective

To explore the influence of administrative aspects of a nutrition education program with peer educators delivering the program.

Design

Telephone interviews with peer educators trained to deliver La Cocina Saludable, a nutrition education program for Hispanics. Open- and closed-ended questions.

Subjects/Settings

Abuelas (grandmothers) recruited and trained as peer educators for the program. The sample included peer educators no longer teaching (22%), currently teaching (30%), and who never taught after training.

Main Outcome Measures

Motives and incentives for becoming peer educators, challenges for peer educators, and reasons peer educators withdrew from the program.

Statistical Analyses Performed

Descriptive statistics were used to analyze quantitative data from the closed-ended questions. Qualitative analysis was applied to data from open-ended questions.

Results

Working with community and learning about nutrition were prime motivators. Recruiting participants and coordination of classes appeared to be major challenges. Personal issues and traveling in a large geographic area were cited as the main reasons for quitting.

Implications

The effectiveness of using peer educators for La Cocina Saludable may be improved through empowerment, additional training, a structured and equitable reimbursement system, and assistance to carry out administrative tasks.

Nutrition education has the potential to play an important role in ensuring food security and improving nutritional status. Therefore, food security is recommended for inclusion in nutrition education evaluation efforts. Considerable progress has been made in developing brief tools that can be used to measure food security at the household level. These tools are reliable in population-based surveys, and some studies have found that measures of food security are associated with nutrient intake. Hence, these tools can be valuable in monitoring, in community needs assessment, and in planning. These tools may also have the potential for use in evaluating nutrition education activities; this potential will be enhanced by research into the capacity of these tools to identify changes within households over time as a result of nutrition education and their sensitivity and reliability in doing so.

This article reports on lessons learned from using comparison and substitution tasks to assess consumers' ability to apply food guide messages. The study evaluated the usability of the Northeast Regional Food Guide (NERFG), which provides instruction on healthful diets of local foods in season. The tasks showed that the NERFG is useful for daily life decisions. Lessons learned were that the scores on tasks need to better differentiate between groups. The validity and reliability of the tasks should be established in future research. The use of tasks may also be appropriate for educational purposes.

Nutrition education programs and social marketing campaigns frequently focus on low-income audiences with the goal of improving dietary intake and quality, weight management practices, and physical activity. The impact of nutrition education can be assessed by measuring change in relation to any or all of these broad variables. Unfortunately, little information is available concerning the reliability, validity, and sensitivity to change of measures used to assess these constructs with low-income audiences of adults and adolescents. This article reviews the literature and discusses the types of available measures that have been used and evaluated for the above audiences. It describes specific measures used to assess total diet, consumption of food groups from the Food Guide Pyramid, and behaviors related to weight management and physical activity. Overall, this review suggests that there is a critical need for additional development and evaluation of dietary quality measurement tools for low-income and minority audiences.

Objective

The objective of this study was to examine the beliefs and perspectives among people with type 2 diabetes mellitus about dietary requirements, food selection and eating patterns, and attitudes about self-management practices.

Design

Semistructured, in-depth interviews explored participants' experiences with diabetes prior to their diagnosis, participants' understanding of the guidelines for the nutritional management of diabetes, how participants applied their understanding of dietary guidelines to daily food selection and eating patterns, and the social and personal themes influencing participants' food selection and eating patterns.

Subjects

Interviews were conducted with members of a convenience sample of 45 men and women diagnosed with type 2 diabetes for at least 1 year.

Analyses Performed

Interviews were coded using a conceptual matrix derived from participants' statements. Common characteristics were grouped, and broad themes were identified.

Results

Eating patterns were influenced by participants' knowledge of diabetes management. Challenges that participants encountered when applying nutrition recommendations were linked to their prior eating practices. Dietary self-efficacy, social support, and time management were identified as mediating variables that can influence dietary behaviors.

Implications

Diabetes nutrition education programs should increase awareness of eating history, spousal support, and time management practices. Future research should include the refinement and validation of a nutritional management model of diabetes.