Improving The Safety And Nutritional Adequacy Of The Home Food Supply Of Elderly Recipients Of Home Delivered Meals

Elderly homebound recipients of home delivered meals (HDM) are at increased risk for foodborne disease and particularly vulnerable to disruptions that might prevent the delivery or safe consumption of food. In addition, there is a great deal of variability in the cognitive and physical abilities of those within this population, as well as a range of access to financial resources and social support that may vary both individually and geographically. Moreover, the agencies serving this population depend heavily on the time and donations of volunteers to carry out their important work. Therefore, to ensure their implementation, interventions designed to address food safety issues within this population must be relatively simple, efficient, and cost effective.

To address these issues, a multi-method research approach will be used, incorporating Universal Product Code (UPC) scanning technology combined with a dynamically growing database of foods and their associated nutritional parameters to catalogue the in-home food supply, an extant home food safety audit form, modified for study use, and a computer-enhanced questionnaire administered during an in-home interview. This project will provide a useful understanding of the nutritional and food safety gaps in this at-risk population that will allow for the design and testing of interventions to improve the food safety of both the HDM and the in-home food available to the homebound elderly. It will also provide clear and useful guidelines about the amount and types of food most needed by this population in emergency situations. Dissemination of the resulting research findings and recommendations will be accomplished through a partnership with the Extension Disaster Education Network (EDEN) and MOWA, both of whom have national constituencies poised to act on the recommendations.

HDM agencies from 5 states (AR, CA, IA, NJ, SC) will be purposively selected because of the varied characteristics of their HDM clients, as identified in an analysis of HDM recipients by state. The purposive sample of states included at least one from each of four of the quintiles on the MOWA Senior Hunger state ranking, with two states from the top quintile. The chosen states also represented a range in terms of the percentage minority clients, with some high in minority population and one extremely low. Finally, the percentage of rural clients ranged from zero in one state to almost 70% in another. Each of the five agencies will be asked to complete the study protocol with 200 eligible HDM recipients drawn from those on their client rolls using random numbers generated by the study investigators. Sampling with replacement will be carried out until a quota of 200 participants is reached, or no additional eligible clients can be recruited within each agency. A targeted sample size of 200 participants for each agency was selected to provide an overall target sample of 1000 HDM recipients to yield an overall sampling error rate of ± 3.1%, based on a population of approximately 900,000 HDM recipients.

The study:

• Will analyze the food safety and quality parameters of the home food environments of homebound elderly recipients of HDM, and identify specific barriers to safe food-handling and storage practices by members of this high risk population. Refrigerator/freezer temperatures will be taken and adjustment made as needed to ensure that refrigerated foods are stored below 40 °F and frozen foods below 0 °F.
• Will estimate the nutrient density and adequacy of the home food supplies of homebound elderly recipients of HDM, and identify areas of nutrition in which this population is deficient and would benefit from specific supplemental nutrition, especially during emergencies.
• Two interventions will be proposed to improve food safety in homebound elderly recipients of HDM: the implementation of dating labels on the meals to help prevent the consumption of potentially unsafe older foods; checking refrigerator/freezer temperatures to determine temperature adherence/ maintenance, with adjustment made as needed.
• Will partner with nutritionists, emergency preparedness experts, MOWA, and the Extension Disaster Education Network (EDEN) to develop and disseminate food safety and emergency preparedness recommendations specifically tailored to the needs of the homebound elderly. Materials will be developed for emergency food providers, home delivery meal providers and the elderly themselves.

Rutgers will partner with the Meals on Wheels America (MOWA) and selected MOWA affiliated agencies in five states to conduct an in-depth study of this vulnerable population designed to improve the nutrition and safety of food consumed by homebound elderly recipients of HDM, and to strengthen the nation's food defense system by identifying and addressing the critical nutrition needs of this population, particularly during times of emergency.

Inclusion criteria

• 60 or more years old
• live alone
• no overt cognitive impairment
• receiving home delivered meals for at least 6 months prior to the in-home visit

Exclusion criteria

• < 60 years old
• do not live alone
• overt cognitive impairment
• receiving home delivered meals for less than 6 months prior to the in-home visit