What are the family barriers and facilitators of healthy eating habits among adolescents?

Professor Lam, Cindy Lo Kuen   (Principal Investigator (PI))

Dr Sun Kai Sing   (Co-Investigator)

Miss Tsang Joyce Pui Yan   (Co-Investigator)

Miss LIU Sze Nga   (Co-Investigator)

Dr Ip Patrick   (Co-Investigator)

Dr Chen Julie Yun   (Co-Investigator)

15

2021-08-23

440650

What are the family barriers and facilitators of healthy eating habits among adolescents?

adolescents, barriers, facilitators, family factor, Healthy eating, KAP

Others - Medicine, Dentistry and Health

18191581

Health and Medical Research Fund - Full Grant

2020

On-going

Objectives: To investigate family barriers, facilitators and strategies that enable adolescents from low-income families to develop healthy eating habits. Hypothesis: 1. Lack of knowledge of nutrition content of food categories and lack of motivation are barriers 2. Food availability at home, food cost and time pressure are family barriers 3. Perceived health benefit, family meals and parental modelling are facilitators 4. Access to affordable healthy foods and easy healthy cooking may be strategies to overcome family economic and time barriers. Design and subjects: A qualitative study by interviewing parent-adolescent pairs of one parent and one adolescent (aged 10-19 years) from the same family, using the deductive thematic approach. Purposeful sampling of an equal number of families whose adolescents have self-reported healthy or unhealthy diets. Twenty or more families will be interviewed until data saturation. Instruments: A semi-structured interview guide, based on the KAP model, will be used to explore perceived barriers, facilitators and strategies in establishing healthy eating habits. Main outcome measures: 1.Knowledge, attitude and practice of healthy eating 2.Barriers, facilitators and strategies of healthy eating in adolescents. Data analysis: The interviews will be audiotaped and transcribed in verbatim in Chinese. The data will be coded independently into broad themes by two researchers using NVivo, and reviewed by all investigators of the team. Expected results: The results can guide service providers to develop effective interventions to promote adolescent healthy eating using family system approach, and facilitate public health education to target at knowledge gaps and practical barriers of healthy eating.