(P16-017-25) Pediatric Nutritional Education: Time to Rethink How It Is Communicated

Objectives: The primary objective is to create engaging pediatric nutritional education materials for use in the clinical setting. Health education is a core principle of healthcare. Its functions to inform patients about their condition/disease so the patient can be empowered to better self-manage or prevent their condition or disease. There are many resources available however, there are five main challenges: 1) nutritional education materials are text heavy, 2) younger generations spend less time reading and have a shorter attention span, 3) the proliferation and availability of health misinformation, 4) low health literacy remains a significant issue and 5) nutrition is not fully integrated into medical education.

Methods: To help address the challenges to pediatric nutritional education, current educational materials used in the clinic were assessed, which revealed that new visual based materials needed to be generated, particularly regarding the importance of nutrition and physical activity—two of the modifiable risk factors for chronic disease. Draft materials (images and nutritional text resources) were created and then presented to undergraduate graphic design students. Each student had full creative freedom to develop materials that would be engaging for children and parents.

Results: Of the 13 independent, distinct projects, after consulting with clinical faculty, two were chosen for testing in children aged 8-12 years and two were chosen for children 4-7 years.

Conclusions: Creating impactful nutritional education materials requires a multidisciplinary team that understands contemporary society, have good translational skills, a depth of nutritional knowledge, freedom to innovate, and must be continuously revised.

Funding Sources: This study was not funded.