As a health educator, my responsibilities included implementing research-based prevention and youth development programs. While studying at New Jersey City University, I was afforded many opportunities to display my knowledge as a health educator. NJCU’s annual Cooking Matter program allowed me to provide education, strategies, and implement plans on how to decrease hunger for youth in Jersey City. My supervisor relied on my ability to plan, organize and assess the program. I found that my organizational skills along with my ability to multi task in fast pace settings allowed me to assist in the Cooking Matter program’s success.
School lunches are often unsung heroes of many modern American households. Frequently overlooked and disregarded because of their stigma, school lunches are a key ingredient that may help make the world a better place. Unknowingly, great numbers of individuals in our communities deal with food insecurities every day of their lives. It baffles me that in an advanced society many people do not have the resources to provide food for themselves or their families. Until it affected me personally, I was unaware nor passionate about the struggles of food insecurity. My passion for solving food insecurity in my local community has led me to gain both experience and leadership through understanding and advocating for those around me.
The obesity epidemic in America is getting worse to the point that it spread into our children’s school lunches. In Alice Waters’ and Katrina Heron’s article “No Lunch Left Behind” explains that the government is investing a lot of funds into the schools lunches and it is being wasted to buy unhealthy junk foods. Even though with just a little more money, the food can be of better quality, healthier, and safer for the students. Waters and Heron back up their explanation by describing some of the aggravations that some Americans have for this issue through ethos, adding reliable sources to strengthen the piece, and using an informative and serious tone in attempts to be heard and understood by the government and Americans who care about the health and safety of the student.
My short-term goals are to enhance my knowledge of medical nutrition therapy, to gain experiences in all aspects of the dietetic field especially in clinical nutrition setting, and to become an RD. My long-term career goals are to become Certified Diabetes Educator, to engage and serve in community nutrition, and to promote wellness and preventive health care for socio-economically and culturally fragile populations. The U.S. population has become increasingly diverse in ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, I believe that providing patient-centered education with respect on the differences of cultural, religious, and dietary practices are the keys to becoming a successful educator in nutrition counseling and education.
Carolyn Tobin Director of Food and Nutrition & Environmental Services at Pennsylvania Hospital has a wide variety of education. She has a degree in Food Service management, Speech Pathology and Audiology and Nutrition. And she doesn’t eat correct. She has been in hospital Nutrition for the past 20 years. Prior to that she worked in food service at universities like Lehigh University and Chestnut Hill collage. She has also spent some of her early career in hotels and casinos. Out of all her jobs working in hospitals she favors the most.
As a teacher, you have the opportunity to share the knowledge you have gained in this course with your colleagues to support a collaborative approach to shared health, nutrition, and safety goals. For your Final Project, you will create a presentation for other educators in your center that is focused on the development of a program valuing health, nutrition, and safety.
Since 2000, Brian Albertson, CEO of SLA Management, has developed a clear understanding of the challenges faced in school nutrition programs and has created a formula for improving school nutrition operations. Wanting to make a difference in his community, Albertson served on a committee tasked with turning around one of the top 10 largest districts in the nation. Albertson developed a business model that
The “Cooking Matter” program will be responsible for three interventions to help alleviate child hunger by recruiting college student participants. (See appendix J for group work VII on intervention development). The first intervention was “Read It before You Eat It!” this intervention will demonstrate the correct way to read nutrition and food labels. Each participant will examine the actual food packaging labels of different food items such as whole wheat pasta, regular pasta, bread, cheese, and
The school food service program had underperformed for years and had been siphoning valuable dollars from limited education funds to support operations. To make matters more troublesome, implementing the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act was presenting a major challenge. Meal participation had been declining, and in 2011, LWCS had to use $77,000 dollars from the general fund to cover foodservice shortfalls. During an audit, SLA was recommended to LWCS as a solution to their food service issues and as a partner that could customize a program to fit their multi-cultural and school community culture.
However, this can be hard to promote if a community such as Germantown experiences such health disparities that puts them at risk for chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity, all of which could be preventable. Therefore, as nurses we can intervene and plan ways to improve the health of Germantown in the most realistic way possible. The nursing intervention to help try and eliminate the health disparity of knowledge deficit related to nutritious foods primarily focuses on education, as it is a primary means of impacting change. Our intervention would be implemented through an educational program at multiple community locations such as school or churches. The program would consist of weekly meetings discussing the characteristics of a healthy diet, how to read food labels correctly, picking the right food choices based on the options available in the community, and informing the participants about the impacts nutrition has on health such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Each session would encompass pre-briefing followed by demonstration of healthy food recipes and then a debriefing to reiterate the importance of that session. Through education, we hope to impact more people of Germantown to use the public transportation to shop at the local farmer's market or supermarkets and have a positive change in their health. Therefore, there shall be a decreased incidence in obesity, hypertension, and diabetes and increase in the community’s knowledge about obtaining nutritional
The Community Nutrition Education Programs (CNEP) operate under the over-arching statewide Health and Hunger Issue Teams. I am a member (minor) of the state team tasked with the design, coordination, implementation and evaluation of Health and Hunger Issue Teams. We began the process in 2011 by crafting logic models, identifying evidence-based curricula, developing evaluation tools, training staff and completing the process of full implementation in approximately ¾ of Oklahoma’s seventy-seven counties.
The rate of childhood obesity in New Jersey remains high, and put children at risk of developing chronic diseases in adulthood. Children living in low-income communities are more vulnerable due to several factors influencing their food choices. Thus, through the Nutritiously Me program, The Rak Foundation for Nutritional Awareness (RFNA) envisions to produce a healthy dietary behavior change among low-income communities of New Jersey.
The service site is composed of hundreds of people, from all over the state of Illinois, from different walks of life, looking to fulfill one mission; to help people. Not only are we composed of a diverse group of people, but we serve a diverse group of people. There is diversity in every aspect from race, religion, socioeconomical and employment status. Hunger is not only experienced by people suffering homelessness. We serve more people who works part time and fulltime jobs more than homeless or elderly people. The diversity I was submerged in forced me to question the factors of hunger, of course. The many reasons we discussed in class, such as food deserts and low working wages, are high weighing factors for people experiencing hunger in this and surround communities. Learning and acknowledging these facts allows for a decent plan of
As Pastor of the Ethnan Temple SDA Church, I am writing to support Dr. Willa Doswell’s proposal to seek additional funding to promote healthy eating activities under our church Health Ministry program (Stacey Lewis, Director). The “Kids Can Cook” and the “Young Girl’s Book Club are integral programs at our church that were originated by Dr. Doswell and her staff in conjunction with partial funding of our Children’s Ministry program (Marcia Lewis, Director).
During my first year at UCLA, I had the opportunity to volunteer with the Black Pre-Health Organization on campus to put together an annual youth festival for children living in underserved communities within the greater LA area. Our goal during the festival was to promote healthy lifestyles by teaching the kids, through interactive workshops and activities, the importance of good nutrition and fitness. As a volunteer, I was able to interact with the kids and create a great bond with many of them while providing tips on how they could turn an unhealthy everyday snack into a wholesome, beneficial one. During the festival, we provided the youth with snacks, various health resources and free hygiene products so that they could begin their new
For my agency visit, I chose write about a program that I have heard about in my community but did not know much about. I interviewed Mr. Eddie Jones, a contact person for the CHEW program at Gardners Elementary School. CHEW stands for the Children's Hunger Elimination of Wilson. The program started as a result of seeing children in Wilson County schools behaving in ways suggesting they may not be eating outside of school. Staff would witness things like children stealing food, stockpiling any available food, and running to be first in the cafeteria line. It was then that administrators decided something needed to happen to prevent children from going hungry at home.