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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 

StrongPeople™ Strong Hearts

StrongPeople™ Strong Hearts (SPSH) is a cardiovascular disease risk reduction program for midlife and older adults designed to improve diet and physical activity behaviors, assess local food and physical environment resources, and shift social norms about active living and healthy eating. The program consists of experiential one-hour group classes twice weekly for six months (48 classes) addressing multiple levels of the socioecological model (individual, social, and environmental levels). Class activities include aerobic exercise; strength training; instruction, discussion, and activities related to nutrition, physical activity, stress, and social support; and civic engagement activities to increase awareness and knowledge of aspects of the local food and physical environment that make healthy living easier or more difficult.  

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity and Reduced Screen Time 

Intervention Type: Direct Education 

A Taste of African Heritage

A Taste of African Heritage (ATOAH) is a direct education cooking and nutrition curriculum designed to increase consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, and spices and reduce salt; improve cooking skills and nutritional literacy; reduce diet-related health disparities in the African American community using heritage as a motivator for health; and reframe nutrition and culinary education in a way that is culturally relevant to participants and honors African American’s culture, traditions, and contributions. African Americans are too often told that the foods they grew up eating are unhealthy and that poor health is a part of their heritage. A Taste of African Heritage (ATOAH) flips the script by celebrating the culinary legacy and often-unsung cultural ownership of healthy eating for people of African descent. Consisting of six 2-hour sessions which feature healthy foods (like leafy greens, whole grains, and beans) from across the African diaspora, the accessible six-session format can be easily scaled into existing community health infrastructure, yet it is immersive enough to produce meaningful results. 

Please Note: If using this curriculum with SNAP-Ed audiences, MyPlate must also be introduced and discussed along with the curriculum.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating 

Intervention Type: Direct Education

Common Threads: Cooking Skills and World Cuisine Program

Cooking Skills and World Cuisine (CSWC) is a direct education intervention targeting elementary and middle school aged children designed to increase nutrition knowledge, culinary skills, liking of vegetables, vegetable consumption, and communication about healthy eating between students and families. Each lesson explores a different country’s cuisine and teaches young chefs how to follow a recipe, prepare and cook ingredients, and leave the kitchen as clean as they found it. Students that have completed the Cooking Skills and World Cuisine program are able to cook a balanced healthy meal that includes whole grains, lean protein, fruits, and vegetables. 

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating 

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 

Healthy Drinks for Toddlers

Healthy Drinks for Toddlers is a social marketing intervention designed for caregivers of young children to discourage provision of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and encourage water consumption. The 45-second videos counter fruit drink and toddler milk marketing messages, inform caregivers about why these drinks are not recommended for young children and include a specific message to parents to “keep it simple, keep it real” by serving water and plain milk to their toddlers once weaned from breastmilk/infant formula. These materials provide SNAP households with young children accurate information about the best drinks to serve during their child’s transition from breastmilk/infant formula to regular table food, a critical time in development of healthy eating habits. 

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating 

Intervention Type: Social Marketing 

Steps to Health’s PSE Toolkit: The Ingredients for a Welcoming Farmers Market

The Ingredients for a Welcoming Farmers Market Toolkit is a PSE change intervention that uses best practices to contribute to a more welcoming farmers market environment for all community members. The Toolkit outlines a 7-step process designed to assist with data collection, analysis, and action planning. The baseline assessment determines whether the market is implementing the healthy practice in question or if the market needs some improvement in that area. The resource guide helps staff better understand why questions are included in the assessment, and how the market can improve its practices related to each question. Using the Community Food Survey included in the Toolkit, staff collect responses from community members to better understand why individuals might not attend the farmer’s market or what foods they might be interested in buying at the market.  

Target Behavior: Food Insecurity/Food Assistance 

Intervention Type: PSE Change 

Growing Healthy Kids: Garden-Enhanced Nutrition Curriculum

Growing Healthy Kids (GHK) is a garden-themed, direct education curriculum aimed to integrate nutrition education with gardening to promote healthy eating and healthy choices among children, best aligned for students in 2nd and 3rd grade. GHK teaches nutrition education concepts closely aligned with MyPlate messages suitable for a SNAP-Ed audience and includes seven lessons with options for an outdoor, indoor, or hybrid (combination of activities from both mural and indoor gardens) garden, giving students opportunities to learn basic plant parts and try a variety of fruits and vegetables. Along with core journaling and gardening activities, lessons include food tasting activities, recipe printouts, physical activity options, coloring sheets, and suggestions for supplemental storybooks to go with lesson themes. Many connections to the Food Hero social marketing campaign exist within the curriculum. 

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating 

Intervention Type: Direct Education 

Supporting Wellness at Pantries (SWAP) using the HER Nutrition Guidelines for the Charitable Food System

Supporting Wellness at Pantries (SWAP) is a PSE intervention designed to promote the donation and selection of nutritious foods throughout the charitable food system. The program is based on the theory that categorizing food using simple, intuitive labels and communicating this information at each decision point while food travels through the system (donor, food bank, food pantry, & client) has the potential to transform the policy, systems, and environment of food banks and food pantries. SWAP consists of a suite of tools for food banks and food pantries to rank their inventory using a traffic light nutrition system. SWAP was developed in 2016 and revised in 2020 to align with and use the Healthy Eating Research (HER) Nutrition Guidelines for the Charitable Food System. These guidelines place foods into 11 categories and assign green=choose often; yellow=choose sometimes; and red=choose rarely based on levels of saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars. SWAP can be used as an intervention in multiple levels of the charitable food system to promote food justice and health equity. 

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Food Insecurity/Food Assistance 

Intervention Type: PSE Change 

Cooking Matters for WIC Clinics (CM for WIC)

Cooking Matters for WIC Clinics (CM for WIC) is a direct education intervention designed to enhance the WIC client experience and to improve maternal and child diets and health through improved knowledge and self-efficacy for healthy eating on a budget, increased WIC voucher redemption (particularly the fruit and vegetable vouchers), and increased WIC client retention beyond the first year postpartum. CM for WIC includes nutrition education and hands-on cooking classes adapted from the Cooking Matters for Parents (CMP) curriculum to correspond with the time frame of other client classes offered at WIC clinics, Cooking Matters at the Store for WIC Parents (CMATS WIC) pop-up grocery store tours in clinics, and customized survey tools.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Other: Food Resource Management  
Intervention Type: Direct Education