Shahmir H Ali
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA
Title: Association between method of accessing nutrition information and nutritional knowledge among Chinese adults
Biography
Shahmir H. Ali’s research and past publications have spanned multiple global contexts – including China, the United States, Pakistan, and Australia – on issues of chronic diseases, nutrition, and environmental health. Ali is employed as a Research Assistant with the Human Nutrition Program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and completed his undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University in 2019, following prior coursework at the University of Queensland and the Queensland University of Technology. He will be commencing a Masters of Science degree in Sociomedical Sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in 2019.
Abstract
Healthy food consumption behaviors play a crucial role in the prevention of obesity, which has placed a growing burden on countries such as China. Nutritional knowledge – which has been studied as a contributing factor to food consumption behaviors – can now be accessed from a variety of different sources, especially with the rise of fields such as mHealth and eHealth. However, to date, no study has evaluated the usage of different contemporary platforms of nutritional information and their associations with nutritional knowledge in a Chinese setting. The aim of this study is to determine which methods of accessing nutritional information are most associated with nutritional knowledge in China. Data was sourced from the the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). Participants responded to 17 diet knowledge questions which were used to construct a nutrition knowledge score (NKS). 1499 individuals with complete demographic profiles who also answered all nutritional knowledge questions in 2015 were included in the final study sample, and data was analyzed using multiple linear and logistic regression models. Preliminary results indicate that, with Internet as a reference group, those who used SMS/Apps as their primary nutritional information sourse had a increased odds of a higher NKS (p=0.22). All other nutritional information sources were associated with a lower NKS than the internet: TV/radio (p=0.07), books/newspapers/magazines (p=0.41), family/friends/classmates (p=0.04), lectures (p=0.11), and other settings (p<0.01). This study has the potential to provide insights on key nutritional information sources that can be targeted for further nutrition promotion interventions in Chinese settings.