Background: Public educational settings and comprehensive health education initiatives play a critical role in students’ lives. Health educators have the opportunity to shape students’ attainment of their immediate and long-range functional health/wellness knowledge, skills and behaviors. A subset of school-age Nutrition curriculum focuses on the importance/role of fruit/vegetable consumption. Health educators are tasked with eliciting healthy behaviors that promote increased consumption rates.
Purpose/Specific Aims: The purpose of this project was for the Certified School Nurse Teacher to assess student behaviors regarding fruit and vegetables, provide a high-quality fruit and vegetable curriculum, and then measure the impact on student knowledge, consumption rates, and self-efficacy.
Methods: A convenience sample of 62 grade three students were chosen as potential participants across 3 district elementary schools in a northeast coastal community. Parental consent was obtained from 27 students. Using the instrument “Nourish Your Noggin,” student knowledge, confidence, and consumption rates were assessed pre-intervention. Students were then provided with 4 SNAP-ED evidence-based nutritional lessons over a 4-week period. Finally, students were reassessed using the survey instrument to capture post-intervention rates.
Results: Results were analyzed by individual question response as well as grouped questions exploring knowledge, confidence levels and consumption rates. Students demonstrated increases in overall knowledge, confidence levels in fruit/vegetable choices at home and school, and consumption rates when evaluated within the school, home, and overall environment. Statistical significance varied among individual question responses but occurred when question groupings were analyzed for change.
Conclusion: This quality improvement project demonstrated that this brief four-week intervention had the desired effect of increasing student knowledge, confidence levels, and consumption rates. The intervention can be incorporated into district health education framework as a catalyst for engaging students in health-promoting nutrition practices.
