Nutrition Knowledge for Spanish-speaking Parents: Evaluation of Paper Handouts, Computer Modules and Web Modules

Providing child nutrition information is a major goal of every pediatric well-child visit. Unfortunately, due to a wide array of issues, doing this effectively during clinic visits is challenging and insufficient. It is because of this that some have looked for innovative ways to enhance the delivery of this information. One such way is the use of touch screen computer programs containing nutritional information. Several studies have documented the value of patients receiving health information in such a manner.

Nonetheless, the use of this medium has not been well studied in Spanish-speaking care providers of young children. The investigators recently conducted a study that evaluated user's perception of the usability of such technology, finding that most users thought that the touchscreen was easy to use, despite their low computer confidence levels. The investigators also evaluated the impact of using nutrition modules on user's nutrition knowledge, finding that immediately after use; participant's nutrition knowledge was improved. I now propose to evaluate this technology further through a 4 armed randomized controlled trial. The goal here is to evaluate the longer term impact of the educational modules on nutrition knowledge and the impact, if any, of additional web access to the modules, on longer term knowledge. A secondary goal is to better understand nutritional habits in this population and perceptions of weight.