Garden-Based Nutrition Education for Low Income Hispanic School Children

Authors

Larry Bui, Dominican University of CaliforniaFollow

Files

Description

Background: Childhood obesity is a pressing public health concern in the United States, with rates continuing to increase in recent years. This problem disproportionately affects Latino children as well as those from low socioeconomic status. It's well established that nutrition knowledge deficiencies and resulting poor dietary habits are some of the most common contributing factors to childhood obesity. Garden-based nutrition education programs have been introduced as a way to remedy this knowledge deficit, however a gap remains as to whether or not this model can be viable for low-income, culturally diverse populations. Aim: The purpose of this literature review is to investigate the importance of diet in reducing childhood obesity while exploring the effects of gardening-based nutrition education on dietary choice improvements. This literature review presents gardening-based nutrition education models as an effective and sustainable method of obesity reduction by establishing a connection between improved dietary knowledge and dietary choices, thus leading to a lower incidence of obesity. Method: A quasi-experimental design with a convenience sample of 200 subjects split into an interventional and a control group. The interventional group will receive an 11-weeks long nutrition education program to accompany the children’s regular school hours. Participants will be between the ages of 7-10, consistent with the ages of third to fifth grade elementary school children. Both groups will take a pre and post test using the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) Survey where results will be further plotted along a radar plot in order to examine each individual scoring component of the HEI. Result: The expectation is that the interventional group will see improvements to the HEI scores in each category compared to the control group, with the exception of decreased added sugars.

Department

Nursing

Publication Date

Fall 11-13-2023

Sponsorship/Conference/Institution

Dominican University of California

City

San Rafael, CA

Keywords

Childhood obesity, nutrition education, farm-based, dietary education, low income Hispanic schoolchildren, HEI, ‘ways to help prevent childhood obesity’

Disciplines

Community Health and Preventive Medicine | Nursing | Other Public Health | Pediatric Nursing | Public Health and Community Nursing | Public Health Education and Promotion