Evaluating a Nutrition Education Intervention to Promote A Healthy Lifestyle Among Older Adults

Abstract

Objectives: Evaluate the effectiveness of a new nutrition program developed to address the nutrition education needs of this community. Design: Quasi-experimental Design Methods: The intervention included a new nutrition education program at Carmine Carro Community Center over a period of 5 weeks. Multiple nutrition education classes (5 classes) for older adults in this community were provided to increase their knowledge and promote a healthy lifestyle. Participants were asked to attend each class session. Participants were recruited from the community senior center, located in Brooklyn, NY. Convenience sampling was used to recruit participants. Participants attended these classes as they liked, but they needed to be a member in order to be able to participate. Multiple tools were used to collect data to quantify the effectiveness of the intervention, which included pre-tests and post-tests surveys/questionnaires, nutrition exit slip, activities and games. Quantitative Data (participants surveys/questionnaire scores) were analyzed and compared using paired t-tests created using SPSS software. Qualitative Data were thematically examined to identify facilitators for this intervention, which included observations made during each class session. Results: The nutrition education intervention program increased participants’ knowledge about cholesterol (p < 0.05). However, it demonstrated that there was no change following the diabetes lesson. Participants reported a positive experience with the nutrition intervention program that was implemented. Many were very involved during the class sessions. p-values were used to show the significance difference between the pre-tests and post-tests. Discussion: This nutrition education intervention was effective in increasing the community’s knowledge, and skills. Even Though participation varied during each class session, positive feedback was received from participants. Previous studies have demonstrated that nutrition education works in teaching participants to recognize a healthy diet and promote a healthy lifestyle. A bigger sample size was included in these studies. However, similar results were obtained as it gave participants the opportunity to participate in increasing their knowledge. Strengths of this study is that it provided researchers with complete control over all aspects of the independent variable, more generalizable, and have better external validity. Limitations of this study is that randomization is not used, participation was very low for some of the class sessions, time conflict with the class, bias