Lay summary
A scoping project interviewing community health service providers and users indicated that nutrition knowledge is widely varied and demonstrates significant misconceptions. To allow a more tailored, but still affordable service, a better understanding of both knowledge and barriers for healthy eating is required.
The project focus will be to co-design and develop an assessment tool with Te Oranga Kaiora (kaupapa Māori health support service). Existing nutrition and food literacy tools do not sufficiently capture aspects of nutrition and challenges to healthy eating for Māori.
An appropriate tool would enable community health services to accurately identify the most effective use of time and resources to provide nutrition advice to whānau, identifying challenges to healthy eating, and to prioritise support.