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FOOD CONSUMPTION AMONG POSTGRADUTE STUDENTS WITH HEALTHRELATED PROFESSION BACKGROUND AT UOW IN SPRING 2018
Last modified: 2020-12-15
Abstract
Healthy food intake is one of the factors that determine personal health status.
Health workers are an essential part in public health practice, because they are the one who will convey health information to community to improve and promote healthy eating and lifestyle. However, even though health professionals knew that it is important to have healthy diet but sometimes it is poorly implemented in real practice. This pilot study aimed to analyse that regardless of health literacy, whether there are some other considered factors that influences health workers to choose and consume either healthier or less healthy food. This
research is a cross-sectional study and the data were collected between August and September 2018. Research participants are 32 postgraduate students who had health-related profession background for their undergraduate degree and/or current students taking health-related courses at University of Wollongong (UOW) Australia in spring 2018. The recruitment of participants used convenience-sampling method, quantitative and qualitative online surveys were used for data collection. Quantitative data was analysed using Microsoft Excel and qualitative data describes using thematic analysis. The result showed that 28% of participants are medical graduates, followed with public health (25%), nursing (19%), allied health (13%), nutrition (6%), dentistry (3%) and other (6%). Using healthy eating index, the result presents that there are only 6% of total participants who maintain healthy food consumption while the majority consume moderate (53%) and somewhat healthy food (31%). Thematic analysis
describes further about different perception of healthy eating, daily food consumption, facilitator and barrier of healthy eating, knowledge and personal eating experience among respondents. The majority of respondents with health professions background tend to have moderate healthy diet, they argue that there are many factors that influence their diet. Health promotion and practical intervention for health worker is an essential strategy to refresh knowledge, maintain and engage healthy behaviours among health workers and also improve
their potentials to influence healthy behaviour in community. Facilitation and provision of healthy food that are available, accessible in various settings especially in workplace with affordable price could promote healthy diet engagement
Health workers are an essential part in public health practice, because they are the one who will convey health information to community to improve and promote healthy eating and lifestyle. However, even though health professionals knew that it is important to have healthy diet but sometimes it is poorly implemented in real practice. This pilot study aimed to analyse that regardless of health literacy, whether there are some other considered factors that influences health workers to choose and consume either healthier or less healthy food. This
research is a cross-sectional study and the data were collected between August and September 2018. Research participants are 32 postgraduate students who had health-related profession background for their undergraduate degree and/or current students taking health-related courses at University of Wollongong (UOW) Australia in spring 2018. The recruitment of participants used convenience-sampling method, quantitative and qualitative online surveys were used for data collection. Quantitative data was analysed using Microsoft Excel and qualitative data describes using thematic analysis. The result showed that 28% of participants are medical graduates, followed with public health (25%), nursing (19%), allied health (13%), nutrition (6%), dentistry (3%) and other (6%). Using healthy eating index, the result presents that there are only 6% of total participants who maintain healthy food consumption while the majority consume moderate (53%) and somewhat healthy food (31%). Thematic analysis
describes further about different perception of healthy eating, daily food consumption, facilitator and barrier of healthy eating, knowledge and personal eating experience among respondents. The majority of respondents with health professions background tend to have moderate healthy diet, they argue that there are many factors that influence their diet. Health promotion and practical intervention for health worker is an essential strategy to refresh knowledge, maintain and engage healthy behaviours among health workers and also improve
their potentials to influence healthy behaviour in community. Facilitation and provision of healthy food that are available, accessible in various settings especially in workplace with affordable price could promote healthy diet engagement
Keywords
healthy diet; healthy eating index; health professionals; postgraduate student
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