Sunday, March 1, 2009

Are pregnant women already following this advice?

Are pregnant women already following this advice?
In this section, we’ll discuss what we’ve learned from pregnant women about their beliefs and attitudes toward food safety and their interest in food safety education.

Focus Groups with Pregnant Women
As part of a research grant to develop food safety educational resources for high risk populations, researchers at CSU conducted 11 focus groups with pregnant women in Colorado, Washington State and Ohio to better understand their attitudes, beliefs and practices regarding food safety.

Most of the participants were white, well-educated women. One focus group, however, was conducted in Spanish with low-income Hispanic women. In a follow-up study, Deb Adamson and Patricia Reyes conducted 4 focus groups with low-income pregnant Hispanic women in
Denver and Weld counties.
Each participant completed a background questionnaire and food safety survey at the beginning of the focus group. Focus group questions addressed prior knowledge of food safety, what they thought about each of the recommendations, motivators and barriers to behavior change and information needs.

Risky Food Preferences
This slide shows the results of the pre-focus group survey on consumption of foods considered to be at high risk for foodborne illness. As you can see, these pregnant women were consuming a lot of high risk foods!

Focus Group Results
We found that almost none of the women had heard of, or were following, all of the food safety recommendations we presented to them. Also, many were concerned to be hearing about the recommendations at this point in their pregnancy.

While food safety was only of moderate concern for most of the women, many had made at least some food handling changes since becoming pregnant. Changes mentioned most frequently included better sanitation, avoiding raw eggs, and avoiding raw or undercooked meats or fish.

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