Examining the effectiveness of a holistic nutrition programme among community-dwelling elderly in Singapore

• Main Authors: Lee, James Chong Boi, Robert, Caroline, Nurhazimah Naharudin, Erdt, Mojisola, Vijayakumar, Harsha, Theng, Yin-Leng
• Other Authors: Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Social sciences::General; Nutrition Literacy; Ageing
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/138095
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Background: Singapore faces challenges in providing efficient health-care services for the ageing population. Objectives: We evaluated the effectiveness of a novel holistic nutrition programme among the elderly who were staying in several senior activity centres in Singapore. Methods: A total of 83 elderly participants (>55 years old) took part in a mixed-methods experimental study. Participants were assigned to the control group (CG), the intervention group without health talks (IGH–) or the intervention group with health talks (IGH+). Demographics, perceived satisfaction score of the administered programme and pre–post measurement on nutritional knowledge and perceived competence were measured. Subsequently, in-depth interviews were also carried out with some participants. Results: One-way analysis of variance revealed significantly higher scores for the IGH– and IGH+ groups compared to the CG in terms of perceived satisfaction of the programme (p=0.009 and p=0.005, respectively). There was also a significant difference in terms of the change in nutritional knowledge before and after the programme between the IGH– and IGH+ groups (p=0.002) but not for perceived competence (p=0.26). Several determinants of dietary behaviours in the elderly such as living arrangements, attitudes and finances were identified from thematic analyses of the interviews. Conclusions: The findings from the study demonstrate the effectiveness of an holistic programme in effecting changes in nutritional knowledge but not perceived competence.