Utilizing a Toolkit with Individualized Food Label Education for Healthy Food Choices to Reduce the Burden of Chronic Disease Among Black Americans

Background/Purpose: Black Americans are disproportionately affected by chronic diseases related to diet including hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and stroke when they lack healthy food options and healthy living environments. The purpose of this project was to implement and evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of a toolkit that primary care providers could use to educate and support Black adults in adopting healthy diet habits to improve overall outcomes and work towards decreasing this disparity. Methods: This quality improvement project took place at a Community Health Clinic in an urban neighborhood. Participants received nutrition education utilizing a graphic titled “Your Nutrition Facts” that contained daily calorie and nutrient needs and a Brief Action Planning Intervention session to assist participants in developing a goal related to improving one nutrient for two weeks. Participants completed pre and post intervention Likert Scale surveys with questions on nutrition knowledge, ability to determine healthy foods from labels, and confidence in making diet changes. Results: Effectiveness was measured using paired t-tests. Results showed a significant increase in all survey questions post intervention including a 22% overall increase in ability to tell if a food healthy from its label, a 10% increase in confidence of improving diet, and increases in knowledge of daily calorie needs (130%) and daily nutrient needs (151%). Conclusions: Diet education and support, provided within primary care provider office visits is effective in improving knowledge, ability, and confidence in selecting healthy foods, and can work towards mitigating health disparities and the effects of structural racism