Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects
Access Control
Open Access
Embargo Period
4-25-2022
Degree Program
Doctor of Nursing Practice
Degree Track
Family Nurse Practioner
Year Degree Awarded
2022
Month Degree Awarded
May
Keywords
Health Disparities of the Black Population, Social Determinants of Health, Nutrition, Evidence-Based Practice, Patient Education, Nutrition Facts Label, Brief Action Planning
Advisor
Pamela Aselton PhD, FNP- BC
DNP Project Chair
Favorite Iradukunda, Ph.D., RN
DNP Project Outside Member Name
Andrew H Balder, MD
Abstract
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.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.