Impact of Nutrition Education on Knowledge and Beliefs about Dietary supplements/Herbal foods: A pre - post intervention study

Abstract

Background: Dietary supplements/herbal foods are widely recommended in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 through social media and conventional media platforms, although their effects are unproven. However, studies showed that both general population and health professionals, who recommend these products to the general population, may not be adequately informed about dietary supplements/herbal foods use. The unnecessary use of dietary supplements/herbal foods may cause harmful effects including food-drug interactions and side effects. Hence, this study aims to determine the knowledge and beliefs of health professionals and general population towards the use of dietary supplements/herbal foods in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 and to evaluate the effectiveness of a nutrition education intervention. Methods: Overall, 106 health professionals and 110 general population completed the study. The intervention was administered in 2 sessions for each group through an online video communication application. The main outcomes were tested with self-administered questionnaires. Comparison of the groups before and after the intervention was implemented with McNemar's test for categorical variables and Paired Sample T-test for numerical variables. Results: Total knowledge scores of health professionals (from 3.85 ± 1.60 to 5.51 ± 1.45) and general population (from 8.34 ± 1.45 to 9.39 ± 0.87) improved significantly after the intervention (p=0.000). While most health professionals and general population believed that dietary supplements/herbal foods were effective in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19, this rate decreased significantly after the intervention (p<0.05). Conclusions: Education intervention is effective to inform both health professionals and general population about the effectiveness of dietary supplements/herbal foods in COVID-19. It is important to raise awareness on this topic to prevent the unnecessary use of dietary supplements/herbal foods. Future studies may focus on the development of other educational materials.