Health promotion interventions

Contexte

In the subject of Public Health of the Degree in Nutrition and Dietetics (University of Murcia, Spain), we have carried out small public health interventions to improve well-being, health education, food intake, physical activity…in the local community. We would like to find other university partners for sharing good practices in health promotion interventions and improving quality for researching. We will extend this project to another 3 subjects more, in the next academic course 2023/24. 

The university students of third and fourth of the Degree in Nutrition and Dietetic  we will design, carry out and evaluate the health promotion interventions.

The target population we will be the local community (Lorca, Spain). Preferentially we will recruit old people, due to our city and university campus take part of WHO Age-friendly Cities project. But, it would be possible, select collectives of another age  

Objectifs visés

We expect to achieve the following results in the target population:

- Decrease weight by at least 5%

- Improve the score of quality

- Increase adherence to the Mediterranean diet

- Increase knowledge of nutrition

- Get high satisfaction with the courses taught

- Perceive the teaching knowledge as useful

Among the nutrition students we hypothesize that we will find:

- Achieve greater student satisfaction by learning in a more practical context and in real contact with the population

- Subjects related to Public Health will be more appreciated 

- In the long term,  we would like increase the use of group education strategies by nutritionist

- Grow up the interest in nutrition for the elderly

Démarche mise en œuvre

The study design is a health promotion intervention
We use project-based learning and service learning, as teaching methodologies

Ressources mobilisées

This project does not currently have external funding, so it is self-managed. Its implementation has been greatly facilitated by the Poncemar Foundation, which has recruited participants. The Poncemar Foundation works to improve the quality of life and well-being of the elderly.

Bilan et perspectives

With the practice accumulated since 2018, we can say that students need more time than given in only one subject. Therefore, in the third course of the Degree in Nutrition they will design an intervention and, in the fourth course they will carry out this health promotion intervention in the target population. Moreover, in two more subjects, “Practicum” and “Bachelor Degree Thesis”, the evaluation of outcomes will be carried out deeply.

We need to share experiences with other universities because health promotion interventions depend a lot on practice and knowing how to adapt to different groups of people. We would like to conduct similar interventions in different universities to generate interesting research results.