Analysis of a Pilot Study of a Culinary Medicine Course for Community Health Workers

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a culinary medicine course for community health workers (CHWs). Specifically, this study measured CHWs’ nutrition knowledge, personal eating behavior, and professional behavior with patients. Seven CHWs attended a 4-week culinary medicine course. Each week offered a lecture-based module on basic nutrition information. Afterwards, students applied nutrition knowledge in the kitchen by cooking provided recipes and presenting them to their peers. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test and McNemar’s test were used to analyze data. Community health workers had a significant improvement in mean knowledge scores from pre- (24.2 ± 3.8) to post-test (27.8 ± 4.9) (p = 0.043). There was a modest, but not significant, increase in servings of fruits and vegetables. The culinary medicine course was effective in improving CHWs’ nutrition knowledge. There was no significant improvement in personal or professional behavior; however, CHWs verbalized cooking more often at home.