Russell County

Margie Hernandez, SNAP-Ed Assistant

Healthy Mother Happy Baby

In Russell County, 52% of newborns were being breastfed at the time of hospital discharge in 2011. (Building Strong Families for Kentucky 2017).  Based on this, it was concluded that there was a need to raise the awareness of the benefits to breastfeeding. The Russell County Cooperative Extension Service SNAP-Ed program assistant collaborated with the ARC Pregnancy Support Center to offer a seven session curriculum, Healthy Choices for Every Body program.  The focus included nutritional education and the importance of breastfeeding.  The Nutrition Education Program assistant conducted monthly programs to fifteen limited resource families.  The program addressed topics such as using MyPlate as an eating guide, the importance of breakfast, breastfeeding benefits, feeding your infant, and food safety.  Each class included a cooking demonstration of a healthy recipe and participant tasting.

Fifteen participants, all female, ranging from ages nineteen to late thirties, completed the program. As a result of this program, 11 out of 15 participants reported they would consider breastfeeding their baby and all of them reported that they had learned how to eat healthier, shop smarter, and had a better understanding of food labels.