"Older adults with pre-frailty and frailty are vulnerable to malnutrition, yet they often lack access to tailored, credible, and accessible nutrition education," says researcher Adeline Lau, from Flinders University's Caring Futures Institute.

"They value online nutrition education but they require resources that are personalized, credible and accessible across diverse learning needs. Therefore, their voices need to be embedded in resource design and to provide future directions for refining the current online nutrition resource."

While existing digital health tools can provide valuable information to offset poor nutrition, older adults with pre-frailty and frailty want to engage with these tools easily, to support their autonomy, dietary self-management and healthy aging.

Ms Lau, a PhD candidate supervised by Professor Michelle Miller and Dr Chad Han at Flinders University, and colleagues from Flinders' Caring Future Institute examined the experiences of older adults in the community with pre-frailty and frailty as they engaged with an online nutrition educational resource that can help people prevent and manage frailty.

"This study highlights the deeper, experiential factors influencing user engagement rather than focusing on usability or digital literacy barriers," she says.

"Participants described how their personal contexts influenced both their motivation to learn and the perceived relevance of the online content.

"This underscores their need for tailored, relatable information that acknowledges individual variability within the frailty spectrum."

The findings also demonstrate that older adults approach online nutrition education as an active and reflective process rather than a passive learning experience.

Participants in the study were given access to an online nutrition educational resource for 2-to-4 weeks, and their reactions were shaped by how trustworthy they considered the online resource to be, and if they had learned anything new from the online resource.

Participants said they valued opportunities to personalize their learning, integrate knowledge into daily life, and validate their experiences through self-directed exploration.

They also valued personalized, credible and accessible nutrition education, multimodal learning formats, and the integration of lived experience into educational tools.

"These insights expand our current understanding of digital engagement by showing that successful online nutrition education for older adults depends not only on usability but also on fostering empowerment, trust and personal meaning," says Ms Lau.

The study results emphasized that personalisation, multimodal learning options, integration of lived experience and usability as being crucial for meaningful engagement with an online resource.

"Some participants reported positive dietary changes after engaging with the resource, while others described reflective learning, even if it didn't lead to immediate behaviour change," says Ms Lau.

The researchers say these findings highlight opportunities to embed consumer voices in a range of resource designs and can provide future directions to refine existing online nutrition resources.

"This study demonstrates the importance of embedding older adults' voices throughout the design of digital health interventions, to ensure they are acceptable, relevant and impactful," says Ms Lau.

"Ultimately, consumer-informed online nutrition education holds promise for supporting autonomy, empowerment and healthy aging in the community."

Source:

Journal reference:

Lau, A., et al. (2026) Perspectives of older adults with pre-frailty and frailty when engaging with an online nutrition educational resource: a qualitative study. BMC Geriatrics. DOI: 10.1186/s12877-026-07672-8. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12877-026-07672-8