Publication/Revision Year of most recent version: 2019

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 

Around the Table

Around the Table is a direct education intervention for youth that upholds principles of trauma-informed engagement and nourishment. It is designed to improve cooking skills, food safety, food resource management, and healthy eating, as well as increase awareness surrounding stress, emotional eating, health values, and feeding children. Participants enjoy hands-on cooking, facilitated conversations, and interactive activities that build healthy connections to food, self, and community.  

Additionally, Around the Table: Nourishing Families is for young adults and parents. It is a curriculum that upholds principles of trauma-informed engagement and nourishment where participants enjoy conversation, reflection, cooking, sharing a meal together, and learning holistic skills to care for their families’ nutritional well-being.  

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating  
Intervention Type: Direct Education 

Drexel University High School Nutrition Curriculum

The Drexel University High School Nutrition Curriculum is a direct education curriculum designed to teach high school students the principles of the MyPlate Food Guidance system, while encouraging them to make healthy behavior changes to their own eating styles. Students will adopt or continue healthy eating habits that include: making half the plate fruits and vegetables, choose fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products, and limit foods that are high in saturated fat, trans fat, added sugars, and sodium. This will allow students to work towards maintaining a proper energy balance to promote a healthy weight. Drexel University’s PA SNAP-Ed/Eat Right Philly program is a partner to the Pennsylvania (PA) SNAP-Ed Program (PA SNAP-Ed) and the School District of Philadelphia’s Eat Right Philly Program. The intervention works to foster positive healthy habits related to nutrition and physical activity. 

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating  
Intervention Type: Direct Education 

FoodCorps Healthy School Toolkit

The FoodCorps Healthy School Toolkit is a PSE change intervention designed to improve school food environments over time. The Toolkit includes a research-backed assessment tool that is used by school teams to assess healthy school food environment activities. The Toolkit also includes the Action Plan, a tool that guides school teams in setting goals and vision to improve school food environments. The Healthy School Progress Report was developed through an evaluation partnership with Columbia University’s Teachers College. It assesses the school food environment across sixteen indicator areas known to contribute to healthy eating behaviors in children, spanning hands-on nutrition education, school gardening, and food preparation experience to the culture of healthy eating in the cafeteria and throughout the school’s practices. It is expected that schools actively using these tools and seeking to implement activities that support a healthy school food environment will make incremental progress on an annual basis.   

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating  
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

Stay Strong, Stay Healthy (SSSH)

Stay Strong, Stay Healthy (SSSH) is a direct education intervention designed to help older adults increase physical activity, decrease sedentary behaviors, increase fruit and vegetable consumption, and sustain physical activity participation and healthy eating behaviors post program. SSSH strives to meet the need for effective community-based physical activity (PA) and nutrition programs, so classes are offered by trained SSSH instructors in familiar locations such as churches, community centers, and senior centers. SSSH consists of 16 one-hour sessions over eight weeks. Participants complete a warmup, a prescribed set of upper- and lower-body strengthening exercises, and a cool-down. SSSH challenges participants through incremental increases in exercise volume and intensity. Each PA session is followed by a nutrition lesson, and lessons are tailored to older adults by addressing topics such as fiber, bone health, and vitamins and minerals for healthy aging. In addition to weekly group classes, participants are encouraged to complete the program on their own once a week, including preparation of the recipes. After the course ends, participants are still encouraged to continue at home or with a community group. The overall goal of SSSH is to increase PA and improve nutrition behavior to help seniors maintain independence.

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

Intervention Type: Direct Education

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 

Healthy Steps to Freedom

Healthy Steps to Freedom (HSF) is a direct education health, nutrition, and body image program (part of a broader intervention that includes PSE) designed to augment existing broad-based drug treatment and community education programs for women in recovery for substance use/misuse. While the long-term goal of HSF is to reduce recidivism and attrition for females in treatment for substance use disorder (SUD), the more immediate short-term goal is to teach healthy lifestyles, improve fruit and vegetable consumption, help improve healthy behaviors, reduce food insecurity and improve treatment outcomes for women in recovery for substance use/misuse. The program includes nutrition, diet quality, balanced meal planning, physical activity, family mealtimes, understanding nutrition panels, increased fruit and vegetable consumption, food resource management, positive self-esteem and reduced body dissatisfaction.

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity and Reducing Screen Time, Other: Dieting and Unhealthy Eating Behaviors, Body Image Disturbances and Substance Use/Misuse

Intervention Type: Direct Education

Cooking is a SNAP

Cooking is a SNAP is a direct education intervention designed to (1) increase fruit and vegetable consumption; (2) increase confidence to plan and prepare meals at home and (3) move 30 minutes a day, most days of the week. Cooking is a SNAP is a culinary nutrition education curriculum. The curriculum consists of six 2-hour sessions with nutrition content derived from the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans incorporating the USDA’s MyPlate materials. Physical activity content is from the 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition and the 2016 National Physical Activity Plan. Culinary skills and basic cooking techniques have been modified from school food service materials developed by the University of Minnesota Extension. Cooking is a SNAP incorporates the social-cognitive theory of change where learning occurs in a social context with dynamic and reciprocal interactions of the person, environment, and behavior. Central to this theory, Cooking is a SNAP is designed as a hands-on, interactive curriculum where the leaders model the skills and behaviors they are teaching.

 

Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Physical Activity, Food Insecurity/Food Assistance

 

Intervention Type: Direct Education