Year

2012

Season

Spring

Paper Type

Doctoral Project

College

Brooks College of Health

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Department

Nursing

First Advisor

Dr. Lillian Loriz

Second Advisor

Dr. Judith C. Rodriguez

Third Advisor

Dr Connie Roush

Department Chair

Dr. Lillia M. Loriz

College Dean

Dr. Pamela S. Chally

Abstract

The incidence and prevalence of overweight and obese children in the United States is a serious health concern since the complications of childhood obesity can have serious and long-term effects: cardiovascular disease, sleep apnea, type 2 diabetes, neurological disease, and pulmonary disease. Parental modeling and nutritional education focusing on the obese/overweight child’s parents has been shown as an effective strategy for improving nutritional outcomes of the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables in children from five to ten years of age. Outcomes of this study and targeted nutritional modeling included increasing vegetable and fruit consumption of the parent by at least one fruit and vegetable serving per day post-intervention through nutritional education. The project purpose was to measure the impact of a parent-focused nutritional educational intervention that increases fruit and vegetable consumption in the parents of obese and overweight children. While the study indirectly measured a nutrition education intervention aimed at children via their parents, no children were included in this project. Parents (N = 93) of obese/overweight children were provided nutritional and modeling education over three months. A participation rate of 14% (N = 13) was achieved. The majority of the parents were single African American mothers between 18 and 25 years old with one or two children living in the household, an average income less than $10,000 per year, and some college or technical education. This project used a pre-and post-test design to measure the effectiveness of a nutritional educational intervention. A descriptive analysis of the participants was computed. Differences in the pre-and post-test scores on the parental dietary modeling questionnaire and the food frequency questionnaire were analyzed. Results showed a significant increase in fruit and vegetable consumption (p < .05). The majority of the increase was due to improved fruit consumption. There was also an increase in parental modeling awareness. Parents’ understanding of the importance of parental modeling had an impact on nutritional selection of their own fruit and vegetable intake.

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