Self-Efficacy and Nutrition Education: A Study of the Effect of an Intervention with Faith Community Nurses.

The faith community provides an important access point for practice focused on population health at a time when health issues such as obesity and overweight are affecting large number of Americans. The purpose of this study was to examine faith community nurses' self-efficacy perceptions following a nutrition educational intervention. A convenience sample of 92 faith community nurses were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The t-distribution analysis revealed significant differences between the nutrition knowledge self-efficacy (p = .016) and nutrition counseling self-efficacy (p = .010) post-test scores for the experimental and control groups. This type of educational intervention provides a model to be used with faith community nurses as they integrate faith and health in this setting.