Effectiveness of a social-media-delivered healthy dietary intervention among firefighters: a quasi-experimental study

Objectives: This study used the Health Belief Model and a social media–delivered intervention to investigate changes in healthy eating behaviors among firefighters in New Taipei City. Methods: This quasi-experimental study recruited 40 firefighters from each of two fire station branches: Branch A (experimental group) and Branch B (control group). The experimental group participated in a 12-week intervention that entailed following recipes to prepare meals, receiving online health coach feedback, and completing a food diary. This group also received push notifications on information about healthy eating habits and collected reward points. The control group received a healthy eating manual. Generalized estimating equations were used to assess the influence of the intervention on the participants’ scores. Results: The two groups differed significantly after the 12-week social media–delivered intervention. Specifically, the experimental group exhibited higher scores in healthy eating knowledge, superior perceived health status, greater self-efficacy, greater perceived benefits of healthy eating, and more positive changes in healthy eating behavior than did the control group. A satisfaction survey regarding the intervention revealed that 80% of the participants in the experimental group expressed satisfaction with the intervention strategies. Conclusions: The 12-week social media–delivered intervention effectively improved healthy eating knowledge, perceived health status, self-efficacy, perceived benefits of healthy eating, and healthy eating behaviors among the firefighters in the experimental group. Accordingly, the use of social media as an intervention tool holds promise for the implementation of nutritional education interventions in similar populations.