Creating an Interactive Technology That Emulates the Motivational Interviewing Process to Train Nutrition Educators and Health Professionals

The poor nutrition habits of Americans are as well documented as the myriad attempts to reverse this course by health practitioners and researchers. The breadth of nutrition knowledge is increasing along with our waistlines. USDA researchers collected data from MEDLINE, a database of medical journal articles. They found that the annual number of journal articles that link fats and cholesterol to heart disease grew from 13 in 1965 to 82 in 1996. By 1997, there were 1,543 studies that linked fat and cholesterol to heart disease (Variyam & Golan, 2002). Since the mid 1970s, the government has released a multitude of nutrition education programs including Dietary Goals for the United States (1977), Hassle-Free Guide to a Better Diet (1977), Dietary Guidelines for Americans (1980 and every five years thereafter), The National Cancer Institutes's 5-a-Day for Better Health (1991), and the USDA/DHHS Food Guide Pyramid/ MyPyramid (1992, 2005). Additionally, health messages have been communicated through Nutrition Facts Labels (Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1994), product health claims, and popular media (Variyam & Golan, 2002). While there is an abundance of information and easy access to information resources, there appears to be little success in stemming the tide against an overweight America. This study is designed to look at new ways to communicate nutritional information to clients and to help those clients set better nutritional goals. Motivational Interviewing (MI) began as a technique to help individuals with substance abuse addiction. The idea is to have the counselor engage the client in a nonjudgmental way in order to set realistic goals and to build an activity path towards meeting those goals. The success in the substance abuse field was significant. The technique has now made its way to nutritionists and health educators. However training opportunities in Motivational Interviewing techniques for this audience are scattered and offered mainly in a face-to-face format, making it difficult for the busy professional to participate. An online interactive source might increase the use of motivational interviewing in the nutrition field. This study aims to explore the common body of knowledge shared by health educators interested in nutrition; recognize how motivational interviewing can be used as a tool to help clients; and determine the feasibility of moving the process of educating nutritionists on MI to a format utilizing interactive technology. Specific technical objectives include: 1) Identifying and documenting the types of information used by nutrition educators in conducting conversations with clients via motivational interview techniques; 2) Identifying and documenting the responses presented by clients to educators utilizing motivational interviewing techniques to learn about dietary habits and to analyze and categorize the meaning of the responses; 3) Determining whether a pattern exists in the formulation of questions posed by nutrition educators, based on clients' response; and 4) Determining whether an interactive tool can be created that emulates both sides of the conversation.