ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To help low-income, older South Carolinian women bring their food choices and nutritional practices in closer alignment with broadly accepted recommendations for healthful eating. METHODS: Included the creation of an infrastructure of collaborators to examine existing data, develop research questions, and collect and analyze focus group data. RESULTS: Include identification of socioenvironmental, personal, and behavioral factors affecting the nutritional health of elderly women used in the development of nutrition education modules and messages to be delivered through lay educators and videos. CONCLUSION: Effective nutrition interventions involving low-income, elderly women must use an ecological approach including behavioral and organizational change.
Subject(s)
Community Health Services/organization & administration , Health Education/organization & administration , Health Services for the Aged/organization & administration , Nutritional Physiological Phenomena , State Health Plans/organization & administration , Aged , Female , Humans , Organizational Objectives , Poverty , Risk Factors , South Carolina , United StatesABSTRACT
This report describes the evaluation of a preschool nutrition education program based on the theory of multiple intelligences. Forty-six nutrition educators provided a series of 12 lessons to 6102 preschool-age children. The program was evaluated using a pretest/post-test design to assess differences in fruit and vegetable identification, healthy snack choices, willingness to taste foods, and eating behaviors. Subjects showed significant improvement in food identification and recognition, healthy snack identification, willingness to taste foods, and frequency of fruit, vegetable, meat, and dairy consumption. The evaluation indicates that the program was an effective approach for educating preschool children about nutrition.
