New HEAL Study: Understanding Food Literacy Intervention Effectiveness: Postsecondary Students’ Perspectives on How a mHealth Food Literacy Intervention Impacted Their Dietary Behaviors

• Post by: Olivia Teresa Caruso
• 11:09AM Feb 25, 2025
• No Comment

A recent study led by Holly Schaafsma with Olivia Caruso, Louise McEachern, Jamie Seabrook, and Jason Gilliland recently published an article entitled: “Understanding Food Literacy Intervention Effectiveness: Postsecondary Students’ Perspectives on How a mHealth Food Literacy Intervention Impacted Their Dietary Behaviors.”

Postsecondary students, who are most often young adults aged between 17 and 25 years, frequently have poor diet quality. This research aimed to explore postsecondary students’ perspectives of the impacts of a mobile health (mHealth) food literacy intervention on dietary behaviors and why the intervention was or was not effective at influencing their dietary behavior.

Ten focus groups were conducted with postsecondary students (n = 30) aged 17–25 years from 2 universities in Ontario, Canada. Focus group data were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using inductive thematic analysis.

Themes regarding dietary impacts included increased dietary consciousness, decrease in perceived unhealthy foods, increase in perceived healthy foods, making healthier dietary choices, and the Hawthorne effect. Intervention effectiveness themes encompassed barriers and facilitators to engagement and participants’ ability to implement the intervention into their dietary behaviors. Facilitators included intervention suitability and application functionality; barriers included technology concerns, lacking time, food accessibility, food affordability, and intervention suitability.

This study provides insights into the impact, facilitators, and barriers of a mHealth food literacy intervention on postsecondary students’ dietary behaviors. Consideration of these facilitators and barriers may improve the effectiveness of future interventions.

Citation: Holly Schaafsma, Olivia Caruso, Louise McEachern, Jamie Seabrook, and Jason Gilliland. “Understanding Food Literacy Intervention Effectiveness: Postsecondary Students’ Perspectives on How a mHealth Food Literacy Intervention Impacted Their Dietary Behaviors.” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior (2025); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2025.01.003