Assessment of theoretical and scientific knowledge diffusion on nutrition and healthy eating effectiveness for students, residents and healthcare professionals at UNICAMP

Abstract

Promoting, repairing and caring for society health is, above all, one off biggest aspirations of healthcare professionals. However, the lifestyle of most of these professionals does not correspond to the recommendations and guidelines given by themselves to their patients. The stress of the healthcare environments and excessive hours of work, favor the adoption of inadequate eating habits, resulting in weight gain and fat mass. In addition, this may lead to a potential development of metabolic complications and contribute to the quality of life of these people. In an attempt to prevent diseases and complications caused by this behavior, health care services usually, create departments specialized in health/preventive medicine. Nevertheless, the number of overweight and obese people continue to increase, and their eating habits remain inadequate, with no sign of changing. Based on the above considerations, the aims of this study will be:(1) to characterize the eating behavior and the knowledge about nutrition and feeding of the community of students, residents and professionals in UNICAMP healthcare area,(2) to carry out nutritional education activities with this target population, and (3) to determine the effectiveness of this knowledge dissemination strategy on adopting new eating habits and the ability to disseminate new healthy eating habits. Quantitative variables will be analyzed by chi-square test and Mann-Whitney test. The level of significance adopted will be 5% (p<0.05). (AU)