Evaluation Indicators: Individual: Long Term

SNAP-Ed Soccer for Success (SfS)

Soccer for Success (SfS) is a direct education intervention designed to improve fitness levels of participants, improve nutritional knowledge and behavior of participants (and their families), and improve youth development outcomes of participants. SfS helps kids establish healthy habits and develop critical life skills through trained coach-mentors. Our multifaceted model combines structured physical activity, nutritional education, family engagement resources, and coach-mentoring best practices. The nutrition component meets USDA standards. SfS lessons are taught 3 times a week for 12 or 24 weeks by trained coach-mentors. SfS’ curriculum provides coach-mentors with tools to integrate nutrition lessons into fun activities. As a result, children are constantly engaged and challenged to incrementally increase both their level of physical activity and their understanding of healthy lifestyles. To further address the social determinants of health, we use SfS as a hub for wrap-around health services. The SfS model incorporates community engagement days, featuring health resources from local community-based organization partners.

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

Intervention Type: Direct Education

Mind, Exercise, Nutrition…Do It! (MEND)

Mind, Exercise, Nutrition…Do it! (MEND) program is a direct education intervention designed to manage overweight, obesity in children 2-13 years old and their families by improving health, fitness, and self-esteem. The MEND programs combine physical activity, healthy eating, and behavior change to facilitate safe, effective weight management and lasting changes in lifestyle. Programs run for 10 weeks and the child and at least one parent or primary caregiver must attend. MEND programs help families in the following areas: 

● Mind – improving children’s self-esteem and supporting families to change their behaviors around eating and activity 

● Exercise – engaging in regular physical activity that is fun 

● Nutrition – learning about good nutrition and healthy eating 

● Do it! – taking action to make healthy lifestyle changes long term 

The newest program, Healthy Together, for children ages 6–13 years and their families, is based on MEND 7-13 but with simplified delivery and focus on critical content. Healthy Together can be delivered by one person and is ideal for smaller groups and spaces. 

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

Intervention Type: Direct Education

Eat, Move, Win

Dairy Council of California’s Eat, Move, Win (EMW) program is a direct education intervention, which consists of five online lessons that seek to improve high school students’ awareness of their food environment and the link between food and health. The lessons are accessed online to engage high school students in reading and writing activities, game-based interactions, and teacher-facilitated discussions. The program aligns with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and encourages appropriate portions from all 5 food groups.

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

Intervention Type: Direct Education

Healthy Choices for Every Body Adult Nutrition Education Curriculum

The Healthy Choices for Every Body (HCEB) is a direct education intervention designed to improve diet quality, physical activity, and food safety practices, as well as enhance food security and food resource management skills. HCEB incorporates lessons and activities that recognize participants’ experiences, skills, and knowledge; explains why, what, and how the nutrition education concepts presented relate to real-life situations; and includes active learning activities, hands-on practice, and demonstrations to help participants understand and apply content.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity and Reducing Screen Time, Food Insecurity/Food Assistance, Other: Food resource management skills, food safety practices

Intervention Type: Direct Education

Teen Battle Chef (TBC)

Teen Battle Chef (TBC) is a direct education, social marketing, and PSE change intervention designed to develop skills in nutrition, cooking, and leadership for participants and their families through cooking lessons, a PSE campaign, ongoing nutrition education, development of youth leaders, and supporting a culture of wellness in partner organizations. TBC includes eight sessions in which participants learn plant-focused recipes and cooking skills to compete in cooking battles. After eight weeks of skill development, the Teen Chefs choose one of four tracts to impact PSE change. The four tracts are bundled with the curriculum license and include School Food Ambassadors (for collaborating with schools’ food service), Special Event Headliners (for ensuring healthy options at School Events), CHEFS 4 Change (program for youth collaboration with local bodegas to support healthy ‘grab n’ go’ options), and Culinary Coaches (teaching other students healthy meal/snack strategies).

TBC School Food Ambassadors have been effectively utilized as partners with school food service to co-develop new school menu items and promote them with demos and sampling. This active collaborative creates peer-driven motivation for more students to participate in school lunch and breakfast, which is easily measured through school food service participation rates.

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

Intervention Type: Direct Education, Social Marketing, PSE Change

Go Wild with Fruits & Veggies!

Go Wild with Fruits & Veggies (Go Wild) is a nutrition education program designed to increase consumption of fruits and vegetables and increase physical activity through direct education and PSE level intervention. Go Wild can be used in curriculum for 3rd through 5th grade, and  the social-ecological model to most effectively influence food and physical activity behaviors. Direct education to students consists of seven 45-60 minutes lessons. The intervention uses a multi-level approach to effect the individual child, family, and school environment to make healthy choices. At the school food service level, many school sites have adopted the Smarter Lunchroom Movement, which addresses environmental barriers to healthy eating in school dining halls and kitchens. Additional classroom activities reinforce nutrition messages between scheduled classroom lessons. Throughout the program, animal characters are used to reinforce key nutrition concepts and drive the theme of the lesson. To get children engaged, children learn about the featured animal in the introduction to the lesson. Animal characters are used to market the program in the cafeteria (posters and animal tracks) and on take home materials.

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

Intervention Type: Direct Education, PSE Change

Create Better Health Curriculum

The Create Better Health (CBH) Curriculum is a direct education intervention designed to improve the nutrition and physical activity-related knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy of SNAP-Ed eligible adults to lead an active and healthy lifestyle with limited resources. CBH has a unique emphasis on improving food resource management through the use of “Create” concepts. “Create” concepts teach participants how to use foods they already have in their kitchen to create a variety of nourishing meals. CBH includes 8 lessons that are to be offered in a series of 6-8 classes. Nutrition educators are trained regularly to teach CBH classes all of which include a nutrition topic, physical activity discussion, and a hands-on (ideally) cooking demonstration that utilizes a “Create” concept. CBH addresses and evaluates individual level changes including short term readiness and capacity and medium–term changes over the course of a series, as well as long-term changes 6 months after participation in the areas of healthy eating, physical activity, and food resource management. CBH also includes a 1-year follow-up survey to evaluate long-term behavior changes. 

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

Intervention Type: Direct Education

Linking Lessons for Schools

Linking Lessons for Schools (LL-S) is a direct education resource designed to improve food behaviors with a focus on increasing fruit and vegetable consumption of youth in grades 7-12 delivered by classroom teachers, guest nutrition educators, or teacher/educator teams. This resource was created to meet the need for short, interactive lessons for secondary level students that could be integrated into core subjects (it “links” nutrition to other subjects).

To provide a connection to policy, systems, and environmental changes, five Community Connections are currently being piloted in seven urban high schools and will be added to the LL-S program in 2020. These activities (which can be used as homework) promote engagement and discussions intended to help students carry their classroom learning to out-of-school situations where they make food choices such as at home, stores/markets, fast food restaurants, and corner stores.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity and Reducing Screen Time, Other: Local Foods

Intervention Type: Direct Education

Kids Cook!®

Kids Cook!® is a direct education program designed to encourage children and families to adopt healthier behaviors through hands-on preparation of a variety of nutrient-rich foods paired with daily physical activity. Program activities use an integrated curriculum format that provides opportunities for interdisciplinary learning. Hands-on methods increase acceptance of a variety of foods while modeling healthy food choices.  Additional benefits include improving nutrition, strengthens family ties through shared food preparation and the enjoyment of sitting down to eat together.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity

Intervention Type: Direct Education

CookShop

CookShop is a core nutrition education program of Food Bank For New York City, providing low-income children and adults with the knowledge and tools to adopt and enjoy a healthy diet and active lifestyle on a limited budget. With hands-on workshops reaching thousands of New Yorkers across all five boroughs, CookShop teaches nutrition and physical activity information, as well as cooking skills, fostering enthusiasm for fresh, affordable fruits, vegetables and other whole foods.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity

Intervention Type: Direct Education, PSE change