Designing a Nutrition Curriculum for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in San Diego

NHPI have a higher percentage of obese adults in comparison to other racial groups (Lasseter et al., 2015). This may be due to risky behaviors, lack of physical activity, and lack of vegetable and fruit intake (Moy et al., 2010). The goal of this capstone was to develop a culturally-tailored nutrition curriculum based on qualitative feedback from NHPI key informants and focus group participants. This qualitative study was guided by a logic model, primarily adopted from the Pili ‘Ohana Project, which used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach to collect data through community informant interviews, focus groups, and a survey (Kaholokula et al., n.d.). Using a similar approach, this capstone used data from two key informant interviews and two focus group interviews to inform the type of materials developed and receive feedback. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze the data and three themes emerged from the interviews: (1) lifestyle change, (2) helping others, and (3) barriers to healthy eating. These findings demonstrate the need to develop more public health programs targeting NHPI in San Diego County. It is important to focus more public health efforts on addressing health disparities in this rapidly growing population.