New Publication by David Wiss in the High Impact Public Health Nutrition Journal

ABSTRACT
Objective: While organizational change in substance use disorder treatment has been extensively studied, there is no research describing facility-wide changes related to nutrition interventions. This study evaluates staff-perceived barriers to change before and after a wellness initiative.
Design: A pre-intervention questionnaire was administered to participating staff prior to facility-wide changes (n=40). The questions were designed to assess barriers across five domains: 1) provision of nutrition-related treatment; 2) implementation of nutrition education; 3) screening, detecting, monitoring (nutrition behaviors); 4) facility-wide collaboration; and 5) menu changes and client satisfaction. A 5-point Likert-scale was used to indicate the extent to which staff anticipate difficulty or ease in implementing facility-wide nutrition changes, perceived as organizational barriers. Follow-up questionnaires were identical to the pretest except that it examined barriers experienced, rather than anticipated (n=50).
Setting: A multisite substance use disorder treatment center in Northern California which began implementing nutrition programming changes in order to improve care.
Participants: Staff members who consented to participate.
Results: From pre to post, we observed significant decreases in perceived barriers related to the provision of nutrition-related treatment (p=0.019), facility-wide collaboration (p=0.036), menu changes and client satisfaction (p=0.024). Implementation of nutrition education and the domain of screening, detecting, monitoring did not reach statistical significance.
Conclusion: Our results show that staff training, food service changes, the use of targeted curriculum for nutrition groups, and the encouragement of discussing self-care in individual counseling sessions, can lead to positive shifts about nutrition-related organizational change among staff.