건강신념모델에 근거한 노인 대상 식품안전·영양교육 프로그램 효과 평가

Most elderly have difficulties in managing food safety and nutrition by themselves. Various nutrition educations for the elderly have been developed, but food safety and nutrition education program and educational tools for the elderly are very limited. The aim of the study was to evaluate a food safety and nutrition education program based on the Health Belief Model (HBM) for the elderly. Education program was implemented for 220 seniors (137 educated group and 83 control group) aged over 65 years at senior welfare community centers. The intervention study was carried out on a weekly basis during each of 5 weeks, and each session lasted about 35 or 40 minutes. The effectiveness of the program was assessed with a questionnaire before and after education. Education program consisted of a 5 week program, and topics were ‘Dietary changes for the elderly"s healthy life’, ‘Prevention of food poisoning in everyday life’, ‘Safe food handling for my health’, ‘Healthy dietary life to prevent chronic disease’, and ‘Safety! nutrition! healthy dietary life’. Education program materials such as slides, handouts, videos, leaflet, and booklets were developed. As a result, there were score improvements in knowledge, dietary behaviors, and health belief after intervention in the intervention group, which were higher than those of the control group. In particular, there was a meaningful interrelation between dietary behavior and health belief (r=0.520, P<0.001). This finding suggests that changing beliefs is very important to make desirable dietary behavioral changes. For this reason, we can conclude HBM theory is an effective model to educate nutrition and food safety for the elderly. Furthermore, food safety and nutrition education programs are implemented and delivered continuously at various settings such as a health center or community welfare center, and those will contribute significantly to enhance perception and change their desirable dietary behaviors for the elderly.