In March 2020, Covid-19 hit our community shutting down many businesses.  The University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension service quickly addressed the need to have media trainings for the Nutrition Program Assistants to reach clients.  The Expanded Food and Nutrition Program Assistant enrolled in classes to learn how to reach clients with online media channels so they could continue to reach the needs of the community. The assistant set up a nutrition education Facebook page and learned how to use Zoom virtual classroom to reach clients.   Having a resource to provide services to the outpatient recovery, New Hope, was vital in their recovery process.

The United States National Library of Medicine states a person suffering from substance abuse is more likely to relapse when they have poor eating habits.  The assistant continued to provide nutrition classes, twice a month to a morning and evening class and served twenty-six outpatient clients at the New Hope recovery center.  The Healthy Choices Curriculum was used to cover many nutrition topics including:   My Plate, Meal Planning, Fats, Sugars, Sodium, Food Budgeting, Breakfast and other topics.  The Center for Disease Control reported an increase from overdose deaths in Kentucky in 2017.  Being able to continue reaching clientele is important to their successes.  Teaching remotely is a challenge but one client said, “You made the classes fun and I learned a lot.”