Healthy Ever After: Parent Perspectives about Docent Training in a School Nutrition Education Program

Abstract

Nutrition education lessons are an effective tool to deliver positive health-related messages. However, there is insufficient research to support how parent docents improve the dietary habits of children. Torrance Unified School District offered a nutrition education program called Healthy Ever After (HEA). The HEA Program enlisted the use of parent docents to deliver nutrition education lessons to elementary school-aged children (grades K-6). Prior to delivering nutrition education lessons, the parent docents were required to attend pre-program lessons to learn about the curriculum and have all the knowledge and tools provided to them. This purpose of this study was to describe self-reported improvements in self-efficacy and knowledge to provide nutrition education to school-aged children among parent docents completing pre-program training lessons as part of the HEA intervention. An online questionnaire was created using the Qualtrics website. Participants were recruited by both the coordinator of the HEA program and the study researcher through e-mail messages and in-person, respectively. The minimum number of participants (n = 20) were met to complete this study. All of the participants identified as female, and the eligibility requirements were met. Participants identified with being satisfied with their experience with the pre-program lessons of HEA and reported improved confidence and abilities to conduct nutrition education lessons for children. Although the pre-program lessons improved confidence and abilities, some of the participants found the role of acting as parent docent to be challenging. It is important to note that all the participants found the workload as a parent docent to be manageable.