On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic. The entire country was shut down except for declared essential workers. The supply chain of food was interrupted and caused panic in local grocery stores.   People began cooking at home much more since restaurants were closed down or had limited capacity.

The University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Family and Consumer Sciences Agent and Nutrition Education Program Assistant addressed the lack of community nutritional and family activity ideas by providing recipes and educational articles in Shelby County's Sentinel-News. The newspaper subscription reaches 5000 homes. The six monthly "What's Cooking?" recipes and articles focused on healthy food, beverages, and lifestyle choices. The articles helped promote potential positive behavior changes to benefit the families and community.  The monthly activity calendars and related articles were also sent to the newspaper for eight months.  Follow up responses from several people revealed that the calendars were used to increase family activities and increase physical activities.  The Sentinel-News staff said they had many positive comments regarding the published activity calendars, recipes and articles.