Food Safety Education: Child-to-Parent Instruction in an Immigrant Population

A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design was used to examine increases in food handling knowledge among eastern European refugee restaurant candidates as a result of educational material taught either by the employee’s child or the Salt Lake Valley Health Department. Participants were nonrandomly assigned to a study (n= 15) or control group (n= 17). The study group was taught by their children in their native language. The control group was taught by an SLVHD instructor in English. All participants completed pre- and posttests that measured four areas of food handling knowledge: personal hygiene and hand washing (PHHW), cooking and holding time/temperature (COOKTT), cooling and holding time/temperature (COOLTT), and cross-contamination (CC). Both groups demonstrated a significant increase in knowledge of PHHW, but only the study group demonstrated significant improvements in COOKTT and CC knowledge. These study results suggest that food handling education programs are effective in increasing knowledge and mode of delivery may be an important factor.