Face and Content Validation of a Healthcare Professional-facing Toolkit to Communicate Information on the Portfolio Diet and PortfolioDiet.app

Background:

As the Canadian population ages, there is an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and higher healthcare costs. Thus, there is a need for dietary approaches to target these challenges. Furthermore, with the transition to greater virtual care, innovative technology-based interventions using mobile applications provide an opportunity to engage healthcare professionals (HCP), including family physicians, registered dietitians (RDs), nurses, pharmacists, and patients in delivering nutrition care to save time, provide education, and reduce costs. The Portfolio Diet, an evidence-based therapeutic dietary pattern for CVD risk reduction, is uniquely positioned to test this innovative paradigm. This plant-based dietary pattern of five cholesterol-lowering foods (nuts, legumes, viscous fibre, plant sterols, monounsaturated fat) has been shown to result in the same low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) and C-reactive protein reductions (CRP) (~30%) as statin therapy in a head-to-head randomized controlled trial. A recent systematic review and meta-analysis. confirmed these effects and showed benefits on other cardiovascular risk factors including non-high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (non-HDL-C), apoB, triglycerides, and blood pressure. Prospective cohort studies have also shown that the Portfolio Diet is associated with a lower risk of CVD, particularly coronary heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. These benefits have led to widespread recognition of the Portfolio Diet from major international clinical practice guidelines, including the Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS). The investigators recently developed the Portfolio Diet mobile application, as a transformative digitally-enabled health service tool for the translation of current CCS guidelines to manage dyslipidemia and prevent CVD.

While the Portfolio Diet is recognized by clinical practice guidelines as a preventive nutrition therapy for CVD, many HCPs remain unaware of the Portfolio Diet and of the Portfolio Diet mobile application. To increase confidence and comfortability in advising patients on the Portfolio Diet, the investigators developed an HCP-facing toolkit (infographic and video) to communicate information on the Portfolio diet and Portfolio Diet app. To ensure validity, the investigators plan to conduct face and content validation of the HCP-facing toolkit and assess whether it increases HCP knowledge and potential use in practice, as well as to assess HCP perspectives of the Portfolio Diet app.

Objectives:

The primary objective is to face and content validate the HCP-facing toolkit and assess whether it increases HCP knowledge and potential use in practice. The second objective is to conduct a quality improvement assessment of the Portfolio Diet mobile application to evaluate its usability, acceptability, knowledge acquisition, quality, and potential use in practice.