Barriers to Healthy Eating and Diabetes Diet Education: Divergent Perspectives of Patients and Their Providers

Patients report that adhering to diet is the most challenging aspect of diabetes management. Provision of diet education is often delegated to health care providers, despite a lack of nutrition education and training and limited awareness of environmental and cultural challenges faced by patients. Aim. We examined perceived barriers to diet self-management among low-income minority patients with type 2 diabetes and their health care providers within a single ecosystem, to test whether providers understood patient barriers. Method. We surveyed 149 members of a safety-net clinic (99 patients, 50 providers), using barriers derived from the literature. Binomial logistic regression was applied to investigate relationships between barriers and patients’ sociodemographic variables and Pearson’s χ 2 was used to compare differences in perceived barriers between patients and providers. Results. Providers expressed divergent perceptions of patients’ barriers to healthy eating, including more total barriers and little agreement with patients on their relative importance. Largest differences in providers’ perceptions of patient barriers included poor motivation, high use of fast food, inadequate family support, and lack of cooking skills—all suggesting patient inadequacy. In contrast, patients showed evidence of high motivation—in rate of blood glucose measurement and desire for diet education. Patients identified primary care providers as a main source of nutrition education, yet providers indicated lack of time for diet discussion and preferred other staff do the teaching. Conclusion. The findings from this study strongly suggest that health systems need to consider patient, provider, and system barriers when implementing nutrition education and management programs.