Nutrition and Cooking Training for Home Care Workers: A Scoping Review

Background: Home care workers (HCW), a growing U.S. workforce of 2.5 million paraprofessionals often supervised by nurses, are an important target for nutrition/cooking skills training. HCW often manage food preparation for two vulnerable groups: their clients, and their own families. Clients are often malnourished or require therapeutic diets. HCW often have low education and low incomes, risk factors for both low nutrition/cooking skills, and nutrition-related chronic diseases in themselves and their families. Healthy cooking, especially on tight budgets, requires significant skills and knowledge. However, little formal research has examined HCW nutrition/cooking training or their roles in client nutritional outcomes.    

Methods: A scoping review of the literature (Levac et al., 2010) was performed to examine (1) available literature related to HCW job roles and training in regard to nutrition/cooking, and (2) potential impact of HCW nutrition/cooking knowledge and skills on health outcomes of clients, HCW’s, and their families.   

Results: HCW job training varies widely, but is often limited in nutrition/cooking skills training. Client outcomes for which nutrition plays a key role include diabetes, dementia, hospital admissions, and mortality. Over half of HCW households rely on nutrition assistance or other public benefits, indicating high risk for food insecurity.

Conclusions: Maximizing HCW nutrition and cooking skills has potential to yield health benefits for their clients, themselves, and their own families. To design effective and efficient training programs, future research may include focus groups with HCW, key informant interviews, evaluation of existing nutrition/cooking curricula, and pilot testing of curricula adapted for HCW training.