Abstract
Despite an ever-increasing burden of non-communicable diseases and overwhelming evidence that good nutrition improves outcomes it is difficult to know whether this evidence is reaching the general population. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether health professionals in Tairāwhiti have sufficient nutrition education for their roles in health education and promotion and whether nutrition beliefs held by health professionals were consistent with current literature. A particular interest was to enlist views on the harms, benefits, and possible barriers to following plant-based diets. A mixed-methods study involving health professionals completing a questionnaire and a subsequent focus group to collect data was used. Survey data were analysed using spreadsheet software, and thematic content analysis of focus group data was undertaken. Participants provided nutrition advice 2.4 times per day. Almost half of practitioners considered their nutrition knowledge to be inadequate, and most made poor use of references for provision of information. Plant-based diets were generally viewed as beneficial to health, improve quality of life, be filling, but were perceived as not as easy to follow. This study is in keeping with previous research that the health workforce would benefit from more formalised nutrition education and competencies to address common chronic disease.
Highlights
Poor diet is the leading cause of disease and death globally; killing 11 million people a year [1]
This study investigated nutrition knowledge, attitudes to nutrition, and perceptions about nutritional education of a small group of various healthcare practitioners in the Tairāwhiti (Gisborne) region of New Zealand
Participants recalled a wide range of estimated hours of nutrition education, both prior to (0 to 550 h, n = 22) and following
Summary
Poor diet is the leading cause of disease and death globally; killing 11 million people a year [1]. Lifestyle-related chronic disease kills 41 million people a year–71% of all deaths [2]. As is similar to many developing countries, New Zealand spends 77% (2.9 of the 3.8 billion USD per year) of the total healthcare costs on non-communicable disease treatment, many of which relate to excess calories and poor diet, alongside other lifestyle-related chronic disease risk-factors [3]. With the strong links between dietary choices and chronic disease, e.g., cardiovascular disease [4], healthcare services need to be responsive to their consumers and this would ideally include a primary healthcare workforce with well-developed competency for evidence-based counselling of nutrition for lifestyle diseases. A recent Lancet systematic review of nutrition in medical students’
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