Impact of a Nutrition Education Program on Nutrition Knowledge of New Home Day Care Providers

Abstract

LEARNING OUTCOME: To determine if a nutrition education class for new home day care providers increases knowledge of required topics in child nutrition, food safety, and sanitation practices. To become a home day care provider for military installations and participate in the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Child and Adult Care Food Program (CCFP), providers must be knowledgeable about sound child nutrition, food safety, and sanitation practices. As a result, potential home day care providers receive training on these topics before caring for children. The purpose of this study was to develop a class on the military and USDA nutrition, food safety, and sanitation requirements and measure its effect on the candidates’ knowledge levels. Twenty four new providers at three military installations participated in this study. To prevent test anxiety, they completed anonymous pre- and post tests consisting often true/false questions. The mean pretest score was 73.75 ± 14.08 and the post test mean was 87.50 ± 7.37. The 95% Confidence Interval (CI) for the mean pretest score ranged from 68.12 to 79.39 and the 95% CI for the post test mean ranged from 84.55 to 90.45. The intervals do not overlap which indicates a significant difference between pre- and post test mean scores. The higher mean test score and 95% CI along with a smaller standard deviation suggests the class improved nutrition, food safety, and sanitation knowledge. The smaller standard deviation also implies the group has a more homogeneous knowledge base as a result of the class. Questions the providers had difficulty answering correctly may need further explanation and included the topics of cleaning versus sanitizing, food storage temperatures, and terminology related to USDA meal components.