Evaluation Indicators: Sectors of Influence: Short Term

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 

Motivating Adolescents with Technology to CHOOSE Health (MATCH)

The Motivating Adolescents with Technology to CHOOSE Health (MATCH) is a direct education and PSE Change intervention designed to decrease BMI and increase healthy eating and physical activity among 7th-grade students. Lessons are taught over one academic year by subject-level teachers and provide a conceptual understanding of positive dietary and physical activity habits and the potential effects on health status. Lessons and are embedded within national curriculum standards for Math, Language Arts, Healthful Living, Science, and Social Studies. The behavior modification component includes individual application, self-monitoring, goal-setting, and skill-building to begin internalizing positive health behaviors. MATCH includes a web-based data management system that provides teachers with all necessary resources and materials, tracks participant results with functionality to generate reports, and allows school administrators and project staff to monitor fidelity and manage data. Students’ heights and weights and self-report health behaviors are collected pre- and post-intervention to assess the effectiveness of the program.

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

Intervention Type: Direct Education, PSE Change

Voices for Food (VFF)

Voices for Food (VFF) is a PSE change intervention designed to enhance food security in diverse rural communities with high poverty rates, utilize community coaches to develop new or provide support to existing food councils, and encourage policy changes in local food pantries that increase the availability of healthy foods. VFF focuses on the engagement of community coaches with communities to achieve intervention objectives while utilizing VFF materials. Community coaches address food system issues by focusing on local food policy and making environmental changes, such as community gardens, aiding the food pantry in obtaining more space, and working on other issues of food security. Community coaches work collaboratively with food pantries to make PSE changes that transition to a client choice model of distribution (MyChoice) and offer the VFF Ambassador’s training, which includes nutrition education, cultural competency training, and food safety training. 

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Food Insecurity/Food Assistance

Intervention Type: PSE Change

Eagle Adventure

The Eagle Adventure (EA) was designed to address the need for culturally relevant SNAP-Ed programming to prevent type 2 diabetes in Indian Country. EA was developed using the CDC Eagle Book series as the central theme. Through this series of four books, wise animal characters are brought to life. Mr. Eagle, Miss Rabbit and a clever trickster, Coyote, engage Rain That Dances and his young friends in the joy of being physically active, eating healthy foods and learning from their elders about traditional ways of being healthy. Throughout the program, youth and their families learn that type 2 diabetes can be prevented through healthful dietary and physical activity (PA) choices. Students in grades 1-3 are introduced to the program through the EA play, which embraces traditions of Native American storytelling. Students participate in hands-on activities and food experiences in each of the lessons.

EA includes the following social marketing components: school and radio announcements, newspaper messages, place-based signage, and social media components to extend healthful messages beyond the classroom to community settings. Not Our Destiny (www.NotOurDestiny.com) is a complementary intergenerational social marketing campaign that is asset-based and shares stories of health from Native Americans who engage in healthful activities.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity and Reducing Screen Time, Other: preventing type 2 Diabetes

Intervention Type: All: Direct Education, Social Marketing, PSE Change

FNV

The FNV Campaign is a social marketing and PSE change intervention that aims to present fruits and vegetables in a way that is both fun and cool, ultimately shifting attitudes, behavior and social norms relative to healthy eating. The objectives of the FNV Campaign are to create positive attitudes toward fruits and vegetables and to drive increased consumption of fruits and vegetables in targeted communities amongst SNAP eligible audiences. Targeted at millennials, the FNV campaign uses humor and the power of local and/or national celebrity to voluntarily shift consumer behavior toward healthier dietary choices. The campaign’s recommended approach includes surround sound marketing through billboards, retail, and transit media placements and in advertising buys on social and digital media, but it can be customized and tailored based on individual campaign needs.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating

Intervention Type: Social Marketing, PSE Change

Healthy Kindergarten Initiative

The Healthy Kindergarten Initiative (KI) is a direct education and PSE Change intervention that includes an integrated, holistic approach to educating children and their caregivers about making healthy food choices and being physically active. Education is coupled with access; families are connected to local, healthy foods through innovative ways and community partnerships. Lessons integrating nutrition and healthy habits were developed to fit Pennsylvania educational standards; however, they can be adapted to meet the educational standards for other states. Learning how food grows and who grows it in combination with frequent food tastings and hands-on gardening may help increase fruit and vegetable consumption among young children. 

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity

Intervention Type: Direct Education, PSE Change

Eat Smart in Parks (ESIP)

Eat Smart in Parks (ESIP) is a PSE change and social marketing intervention designed to promote healthier eating in Missouri’s state and local parks. The effort includes the development of a model ESIP policy that guides parks in serving healthier options, training for state and local parks to assist them with using the guidelines, and materials to promote healthier items.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating

Intervention Type: PSE Change, Social Marketing

Salad Bars to Schools (SB2S)

The national Salad Bars to Schools (SB2S) initiative is a PSE change intervention designed to provide salad bars to U.S. schools so that every child—from elementary school, to middle school, to high school—has daily access to fresh fruits and vegetables. When offered healthy food choices, children respond by trying new items, incorporating greater variety into their diets, and increasing their daily intake of fruits and vegetables. Through these early, positive experiences, students are better prepared for a lifetime of healthy eating. SB2S was founded by the Chef Ann Foundation, National Fruit and Vegetable Alliance, United Fresh Start Foundation, and Whole Foods Market in support of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Initiative.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Food Insecurity/Food Assistance

Intervention Type: PSE Change

Baltimore Healthy Stores (BHS)

Baltimore Healthy Stores (BHS) is a PSE change and social marketing intervention designed to change the local food environment by directly influencing the availability of healthier food options in stores and increasing awareness and skills of patrons to select and prepare healthier foods through point-of-purchase promotions. Exposure to this intervention has the potential to increase patrons’ knowledge and self-efficacy and to improve their behavioral intentions to select, prepare, and consume healthier foods. A complementary component is directed at small store owners, and provides guidance on how best to select healthy and affordable food options for their stores.

BHS has five phases, each phase lasting about two months. The phases have different themes: healthy breakfast, cooking at home, healthy snacks, carry-out foods (e.g., prepared foods offered at store delis), and healthy beverages. Each phase includes theme-specific behavioral objectives, promoted foods, and health communication (point-of-purchase marketing and nutrition education) strategies.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Food Insecurity/Food Assistance

Intervention Type: Direct Education, Social Marketing, PSE Change

HEALth MAPPS™ for Mapping Healthy Eating Active Living Assets using Participatory Photographic Surveys

HEALth MAPPS™ is a SNAP-Ed facilitated, community-engaged, socio–environmental determinants of health (SDOH) discovery and learning intervention. HEALth MAPPS™ mobilizes community sectors and residential stakeholders to identify target audiences’ lived experience of place-based resources, and to intervene with PSE strategies to increase easy access to healthy eating and physical activity (HEAL) environmental supports. HEALth MAPPS™ engages people in participatory action research (PAR) to accomplish two objectives: (1) document community/neighborhood SDOH environmental assets that residents experience as helping or hindering their behaviors and patterns; (2) assess community/neighborhood resources and readiness to plan and implement local policy, systems, and environmental strategies to support and sustain healthy lifestyle behaviors among targeted youth and adult populations.  The MAPPS™ method integrates participatory photography and community mapping using global positioning system (GPS) technology, and residents’ voiced perceptions of their community’s socio-environmental determinants to explore, understand, and improve the culture and context for health equity. 

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity

Intervention Type: PSE Change