- Title
- Evaluation of education strategies to optimise nutrition and dietary knowledge in pregnant women
- Creator
- Brown, Hannah May
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- The maternal diet can have an important impact on both short and long term health outcomes of mother and baby. Pregnant women therefore need to be provided with nutrition information to help inform their lifestyle choices. However, pregnant women are not receiving adequate nutrition education from health care professionals. Alternative forms of nutrition education therefore need to be developed and tested to help ensure pregnant women have access to appropriate support. This thesis includes five distinct but complementary papers aiming to address the overarching research question, “How can pregnant women be better supported to make appropriate nutrition decisions, particularly in regard to selecting foods containing carbohydrate?” Results are summarised by thesis aim below. Aim 1: To explore the carbohydrate and standard serve size knowledge of pregnant women as well as their provision of nutrition education from health professionals (Chapter 2). Over nine months, 186 pregnant women 12-22 weeks gestation completed an online survey, including a carbohydrate knowledge questionnaire and an online buffet where they selected images equivalent to one Australian Guide to Healthy Eating standard serve size. Pregnant women had sub-optimal knowledge in terms of carbohydrate content and standard serve sizes of commonly eaten foods. Further, less than half had received nutrition education from health professionals. Aim 2: To systematically review the effectiveness of food labels on changing portion size selection (Chapter 3). Data was extracted from 32 articles comprising 36 studies. Nutrition and health information presented on food labels had varying impacts on portion sizes consumed, from increased to decreased intake. Aim 3: To review freely available pregnancy apps to assess their quality, inclusion of behaviour change techniques and nutrition information (Chapters 4 and 5). Two app reviews were carried out to assess the quality of pregnancy apps in the Apple iTunes Store and Google Play Store, as well as the inclusion of behaviour change techniques and/or nutrition information in these apps. Both reviews identified that although there is a large number of apps available for pregnant women that contain nutrition information, few are of high quality and most contain limited behaviour change techniques and/or nutrition information. Aim 4: To evaluate the acceptability and usability of a novel portion size tool, ServARpreg, and its effectiveness in improving the carbohydrate and standard serve knowledge of pregnant women (Chapter 6). ServARpreg was tested in 47 pregnant women living in Newcastle. It was effective in improving the carbohydrate quantification knowledge of pregnant women and it made the women more aware of how much food they were eating. Knowledge of standard serve sizes of carbohydrate-containing foods did not significantly change. The findings of this thesis have identified that alternative forms of nutrition education for pregnant women are needed and due to its potential effectiveness, further development and testing of the ServARpreg tool is warranted. Overall, the results of this thesis have implications for practice, policy and research in the area of nutrition in pregnancy and key recommendations are provided.
- Subject
- pregnancy; nutrition; maternal health; nutrition education; portion size; thesis by publication
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1406300
- Identifier
- uon:35614
- Rights
- Copyright 2019 Hannah May Brown
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 5 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 542 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |