Nursing researcher explores link between community gardens and a balanced diet
Even toddlers take a turn tending the garden at the Jack and Jill Child Center in Fort Lauderdale. Supervised by nursing students, two-year-olds stand in line and wait to hold the hose or mix the dirt for planting. As the garden grows, the children weed the plot and attach little sticks to support tomato plants. When the harvest is ready, they help their teachers prepare the tomatoes, peppers, okra, and collard greens during a weekly classroom cooking session. Then they sample the produce. The children are so proud of the garden that they bring their parents to the patio to show off at the end of the day. “The parents are surprised to see what we have out there,” says the centers education director Shannon Prohasdka, “and theyre surprised that their children know so much about the garden.”
(l-r) Dr Pegge Bell, Dean of BUs School of Nursing; Mary-Ellen Mitchell-Rosen, and Dr Carolyn Lindgren, Director of the Center for Nursing Research at BUs School of Nursing
Thats exactly the result Mary Ellen Mitchell-Rosen, RN, MSN, hoped for. A doctoral candidate in nursing at Barry University, Mitchell-Rosen works with residents of low income neighborhoods in South Florida to plant community gardens and help children, adolescents, and families develop healthier eating habits. Rather than simply teach community members about good nutrition, the gardens provide fresh fruits and vegetables that often are too expensive for them to buy from local grocers. A practicing nurse with more than 30 years of clinical experience, Mitchell-Rosen has come to believe that education alone is not enough to promote health. “If you just teach something and leave, its unlikely that people are going to follow through,” she notes. “If you leave them with the garden, you give them tools to change their habits and that impacts their health.”
How much impact the gardens might have on community health is a question Mitchell-Rosen is exploring through her doctoral studies at Barry. She plans to use her research on community gardens and healthy eating, funded by a faculty grant from Nova University where she teaches, as the basis for her dissertation. “Im interested to see: if you change the availability of healthy foods will you change behavior?” she says. While the answer to that question might seem straightforward, actually proving the relationship between having a garden and eating well is no simple matter.
Mitchell-Rosen learned how challenging designing a sound research project can be when she turned in a proposal for the community gardens as an assignment in a doctoral-level course on quantitative research methods. She discovered how many variables come into play when measuring results: heredity, other risk factors, and other changes the subjects might be making in their lives. Her professor, Dr. Carolyn Lindgren, PhD, RN, and director of Barrys Center for Nursing Research, helped her focus. “Dr. Lindgren really helped me clarify my research questions,” says Mitchell-Rosen. “That way I could not only perform this intervention, but I could measure the outcome in a scholarly way and demonstrate why it works.”
Children at the Jack and Jill nursery in Fort Lauderdale
Dr. Lindgren points out the difference between practicing nursing and conducting research. “When nurses first make the shift, they think theyre going to discover every answer to a problem, but research is a step-by-step process,” she observes. “Honing the research question is crucial because thats what guides the study and makes the project doable. An intervention like the community garden requires careful thinking, because you have to make sure your intervention is making a difference and not other things going on in your subjects lives.”
With this in mind, Mitchell-Rosen is administering a standardized pre- and post-test to the gardeners in her study. Her goal is to measure the relationship between the garden and changes in eating habits. “Im not measuring disease, Im measuring whether the garden actually has any impact on peoples decisions to eat fruit and vegetables,” she explains. “If I just tell you it does, why would you believe me? If I do the research, I can validate this practice. Good research validates the nursing profession.”
Thats why the chair of Novas nursing department encouraged Mitchell-Rosen and two other faculty members to pursue a doctorate at Barry. The opportunity was available because of a consortium formed by Barry, Nova, and Broward Community College to prepare nurse educators at every level, funded by a SUCCEED grant from the state of Florida. “The PhD in nursing prepares faculty to further the profession,” says Dr. Diane Whitehead, EdD, RN. “As healthcare moves more and more into the community, its important that we have research on what works in the community.”
While it will take time for Mitchell-Rosen to cultivate her research, she sees immediate anecdotal evidence of the impact of the gardens on the community. “When children see theres a tomato on the vine, its a whole new realization,” she says.
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