Effects of Developing Food and Nutrition Health Promotion Through Ottawa Strategy Programs on Food Consumption Behavior and the Body Mass Index of the Elderly in the Community

Abstract

This quasi-experimental research aimed to study the effects of developing food and nutrition health promotion through Ottawa Strategy Programs on food consumption behavior and the body mass index of the elderly in community. The samples were 70 elderly adults, 35 elders in each of the experimental and control groups. The experimental group participated in food and nutrition health promotion through Ottawa Strategy for 12 weeks. Organized activities were as follows: providing information, educating, creating a policy to promote food and nutrition health for the elderly, exploring and developing local food recipes in the community, and supporting the use of local food menus to cook food in the community and assessment. The control received normal services from the public health centers. The food and nutrition health promotion program and questionnaires were applied in the study. Statistical methods employed included descriptive statistics, paired t-test and independent t-test.

Results can be summarized as follows: 1) After the experiment, the experimental group had a statistically significantly higher mean score on food consumption behavior than before the experiment and more than the control (p-value <0.05). 2) After the experiment, the experimental group had a statistically significant lower mean score of body mass index than before the experiment (p-value <0.05). The results of the research showed that Ottawa Strategy food and nutrition enhancement program were effective in developing proper food consumption behavior, resulting in the better BMI changes. This approach suggests that it can be used to develop health promotion for the elderly in other communities.