James, Janelle, Yates, Karen, and Nagle, Cate (2024) Efficacy of the Nutrition Education and Screening Tool as a Foundation for Exploring Perinatal Diet and Determinants in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women of Far North Queensland. Nutrients, 16. 3362.

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Abstract

Background/objectives: Assessing perinatal diet and its determinants in Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women remains challenging, given the paucity of tools that incorporate Aboriginal ways of knowing, being, and remembering within a quantitative framework. This study aimed to explore the determinants of perinatal nutrition in this population and to evaluate the efficacy of the Nutrition Education and Screening Tool (NEST) in collecting diet-related data in this population.

Methods: This study employed a Participatory Action Research approach using the NEST as a foundation for structured research inquiry. Self-reported diet and determinants were collected from a cross-sectional cohort of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women from Far North Queensland.

Results: Participants (n = 30) declared excess consumption of meat and alternatives, fruit, vegetables and legumes, and dairy and alternatives. Grain and cereal consumption aligned with recommendations; wild-harvested foods comprised a mean 19.75% of their protein intake. Food frequency data were supported by participants’ descriptions of how they eat, combine, rotate, and cook these foods.

Conclusions: Standard food frequency questionnaires are challenging for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as their concepts of time and ways of remembering are different from Western understanding. Use of the NEST allowed food frequency items to be explored, clarified, and cross-referenced; yarning provided a degree of support for quantitative data. The results of this study translate to future public health research, practice, and policy. Alternative quantitative measures to determine food frequency should be considered in future studies. These may include the cyclical approach to time that is well understood and integrated by Indigenous cultures.

Item ID:	85344
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2072-6643
Copyright Information:	© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Date Deposited:	06 May 2025 01:10
FoR Codes:	45 INDIGENOUS STUDIES > 4504 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing > 450405 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander diet and nutrition @ 50% 45 INDIGENOUS STUDIES > 4504 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing > 450414 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mothers and babies health and wellbeing @ 50%
SEO Codes:	21 INDIGENOUS > 2103 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health > 210301 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander determinants of health @ 30% 21 INDIGENOUS > 2103 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health > 210302 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health status and outcomes @ 70%
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