METHODS: The Delphi Technique was utilised to achieve group consensus around the most important life and health challenges that young adults face in Malaysia. Subsequently, the results of the consensus component were shared with the stakeholders in an engagement workshop to obtain input on a NCD prevention framework.
RESULTS: We found that life stress was a significant concern. It would seem that the apathy towards pursuing or maintaining a healthy lifestyle among young adults may be significantly influenced by the broader distal determinant of life stress. The high cost of living is suggested to be the main push factor for young working adults towards attaining better financial security to improve their livelihood. In turn, this leads to a more stressful lifestyle with less time to focus on healthier lifestyle choices.
CONCLUSIONS: The findings highlight a pivotal barrier to healthier lifestyles. By assisting young adults to cope with daily living coupled with realistic opportunities to make healthier dietary choices, be more active, and less sedentary could assist in the development of NCD health promotion strategies.
DESIGN: A cross sectional study was conducted among 267 elderly people, 54 care givers and 66 health professionals in two rural areas of Peninsular of Malaysia (i.e Sabak Bernam, Selangor and Kuala Pilah, Negeri Sembilan). Information on nutritional knowledge was obtained from an interview based questionnaire for older subjects and caregiver and through self administered questionnaire from the health professionals. Anthropometric and functional measurements were also conducted among elderly subjects.
RESULTS: It was found that the elderly subjects had poor nutritional knowledge with 43.8% of them classified as having unsatisfactory nutritional knowledge, followed by moderately satisfactory (33.7%), very unsatisfactory (15.7%) and good (6.7%). Talks, counselling sessions with health professionals and electronic media such as television and radio were the most preferred nutrition education sources among elderly subjects and their care givers. The majority of health professionals studied (98.5%) had good nutritional knowledge. Although most of them (93.6%) were involved in management of the elderly, only 45.5% incorporated nutritional information component in this activity. Most of the health professionals used the guidelines for management of elderly patients (63.6%). However, nutritional knowledge was very minimal in these guidelines. Multiple regression analysis indicated that 'level education', involvement in 'social activities', presence of 'hearing problems', the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) score, having previous 'nutritional information' and 'participation in healthy eating programme' were the major predictors of nutritional knowledge score among elderly subjects.
CONCLUSION: Based on the above findings it is thus, imperative that an appropriate nutritional intervention package and programme be developed so as to help improve nutritional knowledge and subsequently the nutritional status of the rural elderly Malays.