Age/Population Group: Preschool (<5 years old)

Turtle Island Tales Family Wellness Program

The Turtle Island Tales family wellness program is a home-based, family-level, direct education intervention designed to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, decrease added sugar intake, increase physical activity, decrease sedentary/screen time, promote healthy sleep, and promote emotional regulation, providing low-income, SNAP-eligible American Indian (AI) families with skills and tools needed to make healthy lifestyle choices. The year-long 12 lesson program is designed to be mailed into the home monthly as a kit focused on a particular topic each month. Each kit contains themed printed lessons for adults, a children’s book on the topic, support items, and multiple activities for adults and children (3-8 years). Each lesson is designed for use in the home by families for approximately 1-2 hours each month; additional games and recipes in the kit and online encourage engagement throughout the month. The program is reinforced by social media (Instagram/Facebook) and a website that contains healthy recipes, active games, tips for wellness, and short character-based films, and complements and reinforces existing policy, systems, and environmental change interventions in Native communities, such as community gardens, traditional activities, and tribal wellness programs. 

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity and Reduced Screen Time, Other: Sleep, emotional regulation 

Intervention Type: Direct Education 

Steps to Health’s Nuts and Bolts of a Healthy Food Pantry

The Nuts and Bolts of a Health Food Pantry Toolkit is a direct education and PSE change intervention that is designed to support pantries in improving the food environment so their clients can choose healthy food and beverage items. The components of the Toolkit include a resource guide, baseline and follow-up assessments to explore opportunities for PSE, training modules for food pantry staff and volunteers, action planning tools for sustaining PSE changes, and promotional materials, such as signage and “nudge” cards to influence healthy choices. The Toolkit equips partners to share best practices when collaborating with food pantries.  

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Food Insecurity/Food Assistance  

Intervention Type: Direct Education, PSE Change 

PowerUp Your School

PowerUp Your School (PowerUp) is an evidence-based physical activity program aligned with academic standards and social-emotional learning skills. As a direct education program, PowerUp helps youth meet national physical activity guidelines by engaging K-8th grade participants in 30 minutes of physical activity, a minimum of two times per week, in before and after school settings. Every PowerUp lesson is aligned with national Math and English Language Arts academic standards to engage students in active learning. Designed to minimize barriers to physical activity, PowerUp does not require any equipment and can be successfully implemented in a variety of spaces including gymnasiums, cafeterias, classrooms, hallways, common spaces, or outdoors. 

Target Behavior: Physical Activity and Reduced Screen Time 

Intervention Type: Direct Education

Text2LiveHealthy

The Text2LiveHealthy (T2LH) intervention is a direct education and social marketing intervention designed to increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables, increase physical activity, and increase family consumption of water while decreasing consumption of sugary beverages among the entire family. T2LH is a nutrition and physical activity digital health outreach effort that links the Integrated Nutrition Education Program (INEP) and Culture of Wellness in Preschools (COWP) youth education provided in classrooms to homes via text messaging, in order to influence behavior change for SNAP-eligible families across Colorado. The messages are easy to use and include goal-setting for healthy behavior change, fun and easy recipes, family-friendly physical activity ideas, motivational messages and links to resources. 

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity and Reducing Screen Time, Food Insecurity/Food Assistance  
Intervention Type: Direct Education, Social Marketing 

Culture of Wellness in Preschools: Nutrition Education and Physical Activity (COWP NE/PA)

Culture of Wellness in Preschools: Nutrition Education and Physical Activity (COWP NE/PA) is a direct education and PSE change intervention designed to increase fruit and vegetable intake and physical activity levels in children and their parents, as well as to reduce their risk of obesity and chronic disease. In addition to providing nutrition education and physical activity in the classrooms, COWP works with Head Start Agencies and other preschool centers to identify and change school PSEs around nutrition and physical activity by working with preschool wellness teams to impact the health of the students and their families. COWP is also designed to improve the likelihood that persons eligible for SNAP will make healthy food choices within a limited budget and choose physically active lifestyles consistent with current Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the USDA food guidance.  

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity and Reducing Screen Time  
Intervention Type: Direct Education, PSE Change 

Veggie Van (VV) Toolkit

The Veggie Van (VV) Toolkit is a policy, systems, and environmental change intervention designed to:

  • Increase access to healthy, affordable fruits and vegetables in lower income and/or food insecure communities
  • Help the target population improve their diets through skill building
  • Address the interplay between the physical food environment, individual perceptions of that environment, and self-efficacy
  • Address multiple dimensions of access to fresh produce for lower-income and under-served communities, including availability, affordability, accessibility (geographic and financial), and accommodation
  • Improve self-efficacy for finding, purchasing, and preparing fruits and vegetables or other healthy foods via cooking and nutrition education interventions

VV achieves these goals via mobile farmers markets that present cooking demonstrations, recipes, taste tests, and nutrition education to help customers better use the produce they receive. VV mobile markets also accept SNAP benefits, electronic benefits (EBT), and other relevant local food incentive and benefit programs, as well as employ a bundling model in addition to a la carte purchasing. The bundling model allows the VV mobile markets to sell more items at a lower cost and expose participants to a greater variety of fruits and vegetables. Markets operate a minimum of 10 months out of the year and typically source produce locally or regionally.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Food Insecurity/Food Assistance

Intervention Type: PSE Change

Start Strong: Cooking, Feeding, and More

The Start Strong: Cooking, Feeding, and More is a direct education intervention for child care providers that promotes policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) change in child care settings.  The intervention is designed to help child care providers increase their knowledge and skills of providing healthy foods for children, increase their knowledge of Federal food programs (SNAP, WIC, CACFP, and School Meals), and increase their confidence in talking about Federal food programs with families who may be food insecure. Family child care providers participate in four culinary nutrition education trainings to increase the knowledge and skills needed to create a healthier food environment for young children at their child care businesses. Child care providers may care for children of low-income families, so in order to address potential food insecurity, each training includes information about a food resource such as SNAP, WIC, and School Meals. As a result of training, child care providers promote healthier eating at their child care businesses by making changes that result in providing healthier foods and a greater variety of vegetables at meal times. For successful implementation of PSE change, facilitated discussions are held as a space for child care providers to learn promising practices from each other.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating

Intervention Type: Direct Education, PSE Change

UCONN Husky Nutrition On-the-Go, Sugary Drink Reduction (SDR)

Husky Nutrition On-the-Go: Sugary Drink Reduction (SDR) is a direct education intervention designed to reduce sugary drink consumption among three to five-year-old children enrolled in early childhood education (ECE) programs by changing primary caregiver knowledge, motivation, and behaviors. SDR is a 10-week, brief interaction program developed for implementation during child pick-up times at ECE programs located in SNAP-Ed eligible communities. The curriculum includes 10 nutrition education modules centered around eight discrete messages about the information, motivation, or skills needed to understand why and how to decrease sugary drink consumption in a child’s diet. Each week, the parent encounters an activity to apply knowledge and skills learned at a display board, repetition of a targeted message for the week, informational handouts, and a gift to reinforce that message.  A series of short videos that reinforce SDR messages has also been developed for social media. Each week of the program, students enrolled in a university service-learning course set up the weekly display board at participating ECE centers and greet parents when they pick up their children.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating

Intervention Type: Direct Education

PSE Readiness Assessment and Decision Instrument (PSE READI)

The PSE READI intervention was designed with guidance from SNAP-Ed and public health practitioners in Ohio to promote successful implementation of community nutrition Policy, System, and Environmental (PSE) programs as a broader strategy for obesity prevention. Practitioners can take the online PSE Readiness Assessment and Decision Instrument (READI) to assess their community’s readiness and capacity to implement community nutrition PSE changes. The PSE READI can be completed by an individual or the practitioner can invite community members to share their input in a team assessment. The six different PSE READIs currently available include: Farmers’ Markets, Healthy Food Retail, Farm to School, Healthy Eating Policies in Childcare, Food Pantries and K-12 Schools. After completion of your PSE READI, a report will be generated with three recommendations. These recommendations will help practitioners and teams plan next steps and guide community nutrition PSE implementation tailored to local community readiness and capacity. The PSE READI website includes a curated resource library with over 1,000 toolkits, guides, and other evidence-based PSE resources that provide guidance to help end-users put into action their community nutrition PSE implementation.  

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating  
Intervention Type: PSE Change 

Child Health Initiative for Lifelong Eating and Exercise (CHILE) Plus

The Child Health Initiative for Lifelong Eating and Exercise (CHILE) Plus is a multi-component nutrition and physical activity education program for preschool age children and their families. CHILE Plus is the dissemination project of CHILE, a randomized control trial conducted by the University of New Mexico Prevention Research Center (UNM PRC). CHILE Plus is based on the socioecological model and includes 6 components that fit into this model: the classroom curriculum, staff professional development, food service, family engagement, grocery store collaboration, and partnership with local health care providers and Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program providers.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity and Reducing Screen Time, Food Insecurity/Food Assistance

Intervention Type: Direct Education, PSE Change