A Pragmatic Review to Assist Planning and Practice in Delivering Nutrition Education to Indigenous Youth.

Robin Kagie,Szu-Yu (Nancy) Lin,Sandra C Thompson,Mohammad Akhtar Hussain

doi:10.3390/nu11030510

Abstract

Many health promotion campaigns have incorporated multi-component nutrition interventions to promote healthy diet-related behaviours among Indigenous communities, particularly children and adolescents. However, these campaigns show mixed results and while research often describes outcomes of approaches and interventions, it does not extensively describe implementation processes and best practices for nutrition education for Indigenous youth. To enhance knowledge and understanding of best processes in nutritional education approaches with Indigenous youth, we conducted a search using multiple databases including PubMed, Google Scholar, the Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet and Australian government research databases to identify relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature as well as educational resources, such as websites and handbooks for teachers, parents, and students. We list and describe common features of successful nutritional interventions in Indigenous settings, steps for nutrition education targeting youth, school-based nutrition education for different ages, and general guidelines for teaching Indigenous students. Current best practice and knowledge gaps for the delivery of nutrition education to Indigenous youth are described.

Highlights

The health of Indigenous people across many countries is known to be poorer than that of the wider population [1,2,3]
Difficulties experienced with undertaking evaluation of programs in these settings have been described [29], as has differential reporting bias based upon self-reporting of dietary intake and store purchase data in 20 Indigenous remote communities [30]
Studies ensuring community involvement have not achieved long-term sustainability either, studies not involving the community have lower sustainability of outcomes [16]. Many of those with roles working with Indigenous youth have opportunities to provide education that could affect this group’s understanding and readiness to adopt healthier lifestyle behaviours

Summary

Introduction

The health of Indigenous people across many countries is known to be poorer than that of the wider population [1,2,3]. Our interest pertains to how nutrition education of Indigenous young people could form one component of a multilevel intervention to improve understanding of health and healthy behaviours. While our interest and the focus of this paper is on Indigenous Australians, the findings are likely to have relevance to other. The health disparities experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter respectfully referred to as Indigenous) Australians are well described, with a life expectancy gap of around. The median age is 22.3 years compared to 37.0 years for non-Indigenous Australians, which reflects their higher mortality rate [5].

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Results

Conclusion