Success StoryHealthy Choices at the Park
Healthy Choices at the Park
Author: Whitney Paige Alexander
Planning Unit: Logan County CES
Major Program: Nutrition and Food Systems General
Outcome: Long-Term Outcome
Logan County has an obesity rate of 37 %; as well as a 34 % of physical inactivity. Due to the obesity rate and physical inactivity, there are 14 % that struggle with food insecurity and 7 % limited access to food. The Logan County Public Library, Logan County School District and the Logan County Cooperative Extension Office partnered together for the library’s Summer Reading and Feeding Program. Paige Alexander, SNAP ED Assistant from the Logan County Cooperative Extension Services partnered with Tracy Houchens the Director of Adult Programming for the Logan County Public Library to teach the adult portion of the outreach program.
Tracy would have an arts and crafts component for adults and Paige would teach the Healthy Choices for Every Body curriculum that is provided by the University of Kentucky Nutrition Education Program. Paige would teach lessons about food resource management, food safety, serving sizes, and MyPlate. Paige also prepared a recipe for clients to sample while at the park to promote nutritious inexpensive recipes for families to utilize during the summer break with their children. Clients received reinforcement items after completing the seven lessons with Paige. Items varied but were all kitchen tools given to support families cooking efforts. Paige also handed out information about accessing nutritious recipes, foods and utilizing the EBT cards that children received over the summer.
Adult participants showed improvements by 63% in eating fruit more each day, 50% increased vegetable consumption. Participants also increased consumption in 75% more orange vegetables. From learning about meal planning, budgeting, 70% increase in resource management by utilizing the skills they learned through the program. After teaching food safety, proper hand washing, proper food handling while shopping, storing, thawing, and cooking clients improved by increasing 75% in utilizing the meat thermometers that they were given as a reinforcement.
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