A Pragmatic Review to Assist Planning and Practice in Delivering Nutrition Education to Indigenous Youth

Abstract

Many health promotion campaigns have incorporated multi-component nutrition interventions to promote healthy diet-related behaviours among Indigenous communities, particularly children and adolescents. However, these campaigns show mixed results and while research often describes outcomes of approaches and interventions, it does not extensively describe implementation processes and best practices for nutrition education for Indigenous youth. To enhance knowledge and understanding of best processes in nutritional education approaches with Indigenous youth, we conducted a search using multiple databases including PubMed, Google Scholar, the Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet and Australian government research databases to identify relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature as well as educational resources, such as websites and handbooks for teachers, parents, and students. We list and describe common features of successful nutritional interventions in Indigenous settings, steps for nutrition education targeting youth, school-based nutrition education for different ages, and general guidelines for teaching Indigenous students. Current best practice and knowledge gaps for the delivery of nutrition education to Indigenous youth are described.

A Socio-Cognitive Review of Healthy Eating Programs in Australian Indigenous Communities

“…Some intervention strategies could be classified as targeting one or more of the three theoretical domains of SCT (cognitive, behavioural and/or environmental), giving some insight into effective mechanisms for change. Finally, programs that sought to include cognitive, environmental and behavioural methods into programs appeared to have a high sustainability rate [ 7 , 16 , 33 , 70 ]. Moreover, future interventions working within Indigenous communities should also seek to use other culturally sensitive frameworks and concepts that would help strengthen the theoretical base that was lacking in these studies.…”

“…This may be associated with social determinants of health and increase the amount of early onset of preventable diseases such as (diabetes) and cardiovascular conditions. These conditions can arise from poor nutrition and sedentary lifestyles [ 7 , 16 , 17 ]. Current research supports the relationship between poor dietary habits in adolescence and obesity, indicating that adolescence may be the prime time to intervene with healthy lifestyle habits [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ].…”

“…A few health promotion campaigns have been conducted for Indigenous youth, which has provided intervention protocols and outcomes. However, the review of nutrition education programs by Kagie, Lin [ 16 ] advised many do not describe the implementation of the nutrition components of the programs, and they do not have a high success rate without follow-up procedures which limits program sustainability past the program duration. Additionally, the influence of parents, social groups and community in the adoption of healthy practices can be very important [ 30 , 31 ].…”

“…As a result, healthy eating programs are not designed with cultural knowledge or community involvement [ 5 ]. Four previous reviews that focussed on health promotion for Indigenous people found the main gaps in the evidence were implementing sustainable nutrition programs, comprehensibly describing the implementation process, lack of evaluation methods, lack of culturally appropriate material within interventions to include traditional food sources, not addressing health services within the environment and little community involvement in program design [ 7 , 11 , 16 , 33 ]. This review takes on a different approach to systematically look at healthy eating interventions from the past ten years to strengthen the case from these past reviews that more work is needed to be done in Australian Indigenous areas to increase healthy eating using a socio-cognitive approach.…”

Cultural adaptation of health interventions including a nutrition component in Indigenous peoples: a systematic scoping review

“…This tends to be consistent with nutrition interventions around the world despite the fact that nutrition knowledge, or lack of it, is usually not the underlying cause of health problems. This is particularly important to consider in Indigenous populations where social, economic and environmental inequalities pose significant challenges to health, rather than a lack of nutrition education [ 103 , 104 ]. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals [ 105 ] encompass aims relevant to improving Indigenous health including ending poverty and reducing inequalities.…”