Parental Nutrition Health Literacy

Executive Summary Parental Nutrition Health Literacy and Children’s Health Problem: The problem identified in the following study is that overweight and obesity is associated with comorbidities that contribute to chronic diseases such as depression, decreased academic performance, type 2 diabetes, cardiac disease and others (Allesio, 2018; Barlow & Expert Committee, 2007). Demographics reveal obesity prevalence among children and adolescents to be 18.9% in the lowest income group, 19.9% in the middle-income group, and 10.9% in the highest income group (CDC, 2018). School and home environments are especially influential in affecting school-age children’s health behaviors (Luesse, Paul, Koch, Contendo, & Marsick, 2018). The PICO question is, “Will the nutrition literacy of parents of school age children in a low- and a high-income community be improved after a nutrition education intervention?”. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify trends in nutrition health literacy among parents of diverse backgrounds. The trends identified may assist in the direction of future studies in order to implement tools that will improve the nutrition knowledge of parents. This information will translate into practices that will benefit the nutritional health status of their children. If these healthy practices are implemented into the family routine, the children will reduce their basis for chronic diseases that are nutrition related and that begin early in development. Goals: The goal is to improve the nutrition literacy of parents because health literacy of parents is directly related to their BMI’s and this is predictive of their children’s BMI’s (Morrison, Power, Nicklas &Hughes, 2013). Objectives: The objectives of the project include the use of a nutrition literacy survey (NLit), with known validity and reliability to assess if an education intervention improved nutrition literacy of parents. By implementing nutrition education to parents, they will have increased awareness of the health consequences of poor nutritional behaviors. Plan: The plan is to provide and advocate for nutrition literacy programs for parents in all communities through public venues in cooperation with community partners, especially in at-risk areas. Outcomes and Results: The pre-and post-nutrition education intervention surveys were analyzed using inferential and descriptive statistics that were run using IBM SPSS software. There was an aggregate sample of 30 obtained for the study. The outcome and results of this study are very positive based on the statistical analysis generated. The paired-sample t-test of the aggregate samples shows a pre-and post-intervention mean of correct answers of 30.12 and 34.27, respectively with a sig. (two-tailed) p-value of .000. We reject the null hypothesis for the aggregate group. H0: (t=-2.752, p=.000). This indicates that the means are statistically different and there was an improvement in overall nutrition-literacy scores after the nutrition education intervention. Individual results from each group show improvement in the post-education intervention surveys as well. The Cronbach’s alpha statistic was .929 for the study which indicates excellent internal consistency