Nutrition Education for Students with Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

Nutrition education is an important component for students of all ages, as it can assist in living a healthy lifestyle once outside of school. In an educational setting, finding ways to resonate with students and identifying whether the nutrition intervention worked is complicated. In this research, a needs assessment was conducted to discover nutrition problems in the given population. Two nutrition problems were identified, and nutrition interventions of handwashing and portion control education were implemented to properly educate 4 non-verbal, non-reading, non-writing high school- aged students ages 16-19. Methods selected for this nutrition education session were an interactive handwashing demonstration, and an interactive portion control food demonstration, measured by observational pre- and post-tests which analyzed the immediate success of the intervention. The outcome results indicated 75% (n=4) of students showed improvement in handwashing practices after the intervention, with an average length of handwashing duration increasing by 13.85 seconds. Results also showed 66.7% (n=3) of students were able to correctly portion meals post intervention, yet 75% of students still consumed inappropriate portions post intervention. The results suggest that in the population studied, interactive nutrition education interventions have a positive impact on nutrition education and intervention outcomes. However, this project was not free of limitations; as the sample size was very small (n=4). Further research is needed to identify the potential for success in using this method with a larger sample sized classroom with similar demographics to this population.