September 2013 summary

This study interviewed overweight, low income, urban, pregnant, African American women to develop motivators and barriers for eating healthy. Motivators were to have a healthy baby and reduce negative symptoms of pregnancy. Barriers were taste and cost of healthy foods, limited access to healthy foods, plentiful access to unhealthy foods, no steady supply of healthy foods month-to-month, lack of meal schedule, pregnancy induced fatigue prevents cooking, misconception of what healthy food is, overeating so as not to deprive baby, and pressure to eat from others.

Q1: Taking a look at one of the eight barriers to eating healthy, which one would you focus on when creating an intervention for these women? Why would you choose that barrier?

Kaitlin, Carly, and Beth chose the “taste and cost” barrier. Kaitlin would educate them on resources available to access less costly foods and provide recipes. Beth would create grocery lists of low-cost items, which Emily agreed would be helpful. Carly would provide cooking demos with fruits and vegetables that are in-season. Then freeze them for easy meals later, which also covered the “fatigue” barrier. Sarah, Erin, and Beth agreed that this was a good idea and could help more than pregnant women.

Lynetta and Sarah chose the “limited access to healthy foods” barrier because it could encompass many others. Like Kaitlin, they would provide education on nutrition and resources for obtaining healthy foods. Aria agreed this would be beneficial.

Emily chose the “overeating/pressure to eat” barrier. She believes it is important to understand hunger cues and will help in the long run for preventing weight gain. Kaitlin and Carly agreed.

Aria and Erin would focus on the “fatigue” barrier. Aria would determine the types of foods and times preferred to eat, and develop a plan of easy access foods, while Erin would do cooking demonstrations to show how easy certain meals can be. Lynetta agreed that developing a personalized plan would be helpful.

Q2: Give an example of an intervention you would create based on the barrier you chose in the previous question. How would you execute this intervention? What challenges would you face?

Kaitlin, Aria, Erin, and Carly suggested partnering with a community garden and food bank for cooking demonstrations. Sarah suggested a handout for ways to use these ingredients. A barrier would be time to attend, willingness, and transportation.

Lynetta would identify why the population had limited access to foods. Then target a solution based on these findnings .

Emily would have participants rate hunger on a 1-10 scale each time they ate. Again, willingness and time would be barriers. Kaitlin, Lynetta, and Aria agreed.

Beth and Aria suggested a grocery store tour. Carly and Erin agreed.

Q3: A barrier to this study was the small sample size and limited ability to generalize to a larger population. Create and describe a study that could be conducted to help broaden this topic further. 

Kaitlin, Carly, Beth, Aria, and Lynetta suggested using WIC participants. Sarah agreed and supported compensation of participants. Emily suggested that different demographic areas be studied, that low-income overweight African American women not be the only participants included. Beth and Aria suggested looking into differences in different regions of the country. Erin suggested opening up the demographics further by including those who are not low-income.