Abstract

Latinos comprise 18.9% of the population in the United States and are the largest and fastest growing minority group. Obesity prevalence was 26.2% among Hispanic children compared to 16.6% among non-Hispanic White children. The obesity epidemic among Latino children has been growing rapidly over the past three decades. Multiple barriers, such as lack of culturally appropriate screening tools, language, and lack of access to nutritional assessment and expert consultation, prevents screening of Latino children and further nutritional guidance. For this reason, prevention efforts such as the use of nutritional screening tools is required for early intervention, more so with populations such as Hispanics that are already at higher risk. To prevent the further divide and increased prevalence of obesity, malnutrition, and food insecurity within this group, it is necessary to develop validated, reliable, and culturally competent screening tools that consider the population cultural background. While nutritional screening tools exist and have been validated in English and even translated into Spanish, there are distinct cultural and geographic eating patterns associated with different diet-related disease rates. As we recognize different benefits and results from varying diets, this leads to the conclusion that differing cultural dietary practices present within the Hispanic population in the United States require more than just a translation of existing validated screening tools. The purpose of this project is to develop a Spanish nutrition screening tool for 3-5-year-old children to be used by Spanish-speaking parents in community settings, to appropriately address malnutrition risk factors with cultural sensitivity. To achieve validity of this screening tool, this study had two phases. Phase 1 established face and content validity and phase 2 established criterion validity. This paper will focus on criterion validity. The Spanish nutrition screening tool results were compared to the dietitian assessment risk rating classification using Chi-Square to determine the sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value of the screening tool. After a comparison between the nutritional assessment and the nutrition screening tool, the tool proved to have a sensitivity of 91.67% and a specificity of 81.48%.

Degree

MS

College and Department

Life Sciences; Nutrition, Dietetics, and Food Science

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2023-04-07

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd12710

Keywords

nutritional screening, children, Hispanic, criterion validation

Language

english

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