Masters Theses

Date of Award

8-2021

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Nutrition

Major Professor

Marsha L Spence

Committee Members

Betsy Anderson-Steeves, Laurie Meschke

Abstract

Limited food access during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a leading public health concern. An important role of public health nutrition professionals is responding to food and nutrition crises. However, there is limited information about training public health nutrition professionals to respond to viral outbreaks, especially related to providing food access and assistance information to individuals and families with limited access. In response to this need, the novel Remote Provision of Food Access and Assistance Resources(FAAR) was developed to train emerging public health nutritionists to assess and disseminate food access and assistance resources for individuals with limited food access during COVID-19. The purpose of this quasi-experimental pre-/post-test study design was to evaluate self-efficacy of community nutrition leaders (CNLs) who implemented the FAAR program. CNLs completed a pre-test self-efficacy survey, reviewed the program training manual, and attended a two-hour remote training. After training, they were assigned 10-12 zip codes of contacts who self-reported compromised food security. CNLs assessed food access and assistance resources in their assigned zip codes and disseminated resources via email to their assigned contacts through an interactive data visualization map. Following program implementation, CNLs completed a post-test self-efficacy and quality improvement survey. Paired-sample t-tests revealed CNL (n=22) self-efficacy significantly increased by 6.64 points (p

Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Share

COinS