Growing Their Own Nutrition: Evaluating the Impact of a Community Garden Intervention with Karen Refugees in North Carolina

Public Deposited
Analytics

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
Request Version for Screen Reader
Last Modified
  • February 27, 2019
Creator
  • Gore, Allanah
    • Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Nutrition
Abstract
  • Refugee populations migrate from one country to another, and experience nutrition transition associated with changes in their physical and social environments, diet, access to healthy foods and healthcare. Many Karen people of Burma have been resettled in the United States from Thailand refugee camps since 2005. The Karen traditionally come from rural areas dominated by subsistence farming in Burma, and many of them want to continue farming after they resettle in North Carolina. In 2014, two researchers at North Carolina State University developed a local project to: assess barriers and assets of the Karen; implement a community-led intervention using local food resources; and to evaluate the impact of project in order to contribute to best practices for adapting existing Cooperative Extension programs to better integrate these communities. Eight families participated in gardening project, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with six of the male participants. The interview guide was comprised of three sections: early food culture, immigration experience and changes to food availability, and participation in the community garden. Thematic qualitative analysis of the data revealed one major nutrition-related theme: good nutrition is obtained by consumption of "fresh" produce grown by Karen themselves. This suggests that increased access to land and associated gardening resources may lead to increase consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables by Karen community, reducing risk of chronic conditions associated with these refugees in the U.S. Increased access to land may have other cultural, agricultural, and economic benefits associated with gardening and fresh food production.
Date of publication
DOI
Resource type
Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Bentley, Margaret
Degree
  • Master of Public Health
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Graduation year
  • 2015
Language
Deposit record
  • ec6acc1f-dd30-446a-a923-ede8671f2c72

Relations

Parents:

This work has no parents.

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details 2015_Gore.pdf 2019-04-26 Public Download