Success StoryCooking with Lifeskills



Cooking with Lifeskills

Author: Whitney Paige Alexander

Planning Unit: Logan County CES

Major Program: Nutrition and Food Systems General

Outcome: Intermediate Outcome

According to the CDC National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities for Kentucky there are 1,250,335 adults in Kentucky who have a disability. The disability types are mobility, cognition, independent living, hearing, vision, and self-care.  In Kentucky 17% have cognitive disabilities and 9% with mobility disabilities. Lifeskills Industries is a intellectual disability workshop for individuals to work and gain everyday lifeskills.

Lifeskills Industries in Logan County shut down their workshop and joined the Warren County Lifeskills Industries Workshop. They contacted Paige Alexander Logan County Senior NEP assistant about teaching Healthy Choices for Every Body Curriculum to clients. Majority of the clients have a chronic disease and cannot live independently. Through clients working at Lifeskills Industries they are able to get a paycheck weekly to pay for their vending machine snacks, special outings, and groceries.  

Paige taught the Healthy Choices for Every Body curriculum that is a core curriculum for University of Kentucky Nutrition Education Program. Paige went monthly to the workshop to teach clients a nutrition lesson and food demonstration with hands on experience for clients. Clients gained confidence in measuring, knife skills and following recipes. Clients improved their diet quality ; by 58% eating more vegetables a day and variety of vegetables a day . To help with chronic diseases 56% improved their physical activity with 30 minutes a day. Clients improved their food handling practices with safe handling of raw products by 66% improvement and 72% improved on handwashing practices. In July Paige received the “ Community Partner Achievement” award from Lifeksills Industries due to her community partnership with Lifeskills Industries company for over 12 years.






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