Rena Baradi, Rebekah Behson, Sarah Bender, Lindsey Coble,

Christy Feldman, Autumn Finn, Nicole Fleshman, Elizabeth

Shelton
 Aggregate Description
● FoodBank of Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore
○ 8 Kid’s Cafe locations throughout Hampton Roads
○ Children are able to attend after school
■ Do homework, play games, eat dinner together
■ Dinner includes: meat, fruit, vegetable & milk
● Food insecure children ages 0-18 are able to participate
○ Children may participate as long as they would like, some have participated for many years
○ Many of the children were African American, however there were some children of other
ethnicities, such as Hispanic & white
● Some location would have as few as 5 children and others would have as many
as 50
Assessment
Completed during Community Health I

Visited several Kid’s Cafe Sites: Norfolk, Chesapeake, Virginia

Beach

● Children & Knowledge Level

● Structure, Resources, & Schedule at each Location
● Food Served & Any Recent Changes
● Current Education Provided
● Length of Participation in Kid’s Cafe
● Improvements
 Assessment
Results:

● Variety of ages and educational

levels
● Poor understanding
○ Nutrition
○ Nutritional Labels
○ Balanced Plates
○ Healthy Snacking
● Request by coordinators for
education on Personal Hygiene
Plan
● Planning based on Community Health 1 assessment
○ Observations
■ Snack time at one location included covering pretzels with
chocolate
■ Opportunity to teach healthy snack alternatives
○ Children’s knowledge deficiency in
■ Five food groups
■ Distinguishing fruits and vegetables
■ Balanced plate
■ Personal hygiene (requested by coordinators)
○ Children's willingness to learn
Plan

● Understanding aggregate
○ Kid-friendly terms
○ Short attention spans
○ Promote and optimize participation with related activities
○ Handouts to bring home
■ Word search, crossword puzzle, coloring sheets on food
groups
 Plan: Priorities
● Identified health problem and/or need for intervention: lack of basic nutritional
education
● Provide nutrition-based educational material to increase knowledge.
● Priorities identified were based on the children's knowledge deficiency associated
with the following topics:
● Balanced Plate - “My Plate”
● Fruits and Vegetables
● Healthy Snacking
● Personal Hygiene
Plan: Measured Outcomes
● 75% of the children prove comprehension of a balanced plate by
stating all five foods groups, examples of each, and drawing what a
“MyPlate” should look like.
● 50% of the children demonstrate understanding of fruits and
vegetables by stating the benefits of each and examples of each.
● 50% of the children show recognition of knowledge regarding
healthy snacking by providing healthy alternatives to certain foods
such as pizza, potato chips, and ice cream.
● 75% of the children exhibit understanding of personal hygiene by
describing the importance of dental and body hygiene and indicating
the steps of how to properly wash hands.
Interventions

Education topics: Format:

● Healthy snacking ● 15-20 minute powerpoint

● MyPlate presentations
● Personal hygiene ● Interactive questions
● Fruits and Vegetables ● Pre- and Post-test
● Presentation adapted per
age group
● Take home handouts for
kids and parents
Interventions

Successes

● Actively engaged in all parts of education

● Post-test scores showed retained and gained knowledge
● Children returned excited to learn more

Limitations

● Different children and group size each week

● Could not evaluate spread of education
 Christy and Elizabeth at Kid’s Cafe

Rebekah in Agency Marketplace

Nicole at Mobile Pantry

 Evaluation
● Primary Objective: To increase the nutritional
knowledge of the aggregate.
● Expected outcomes: Varied between presentations
○ “My Plate”
○ Fruits and Vegetables
○ Healthy Snacking
○ Hygiene
 Evaluation
● Evaluation process:
○ Pretest and posttest specific to information provided in each
presentation
○ Testing was adjusted based on age appropriateness
● Rationale
○ Testing: written, verbal, pictures
○ Determine baseline knowledge
○ Determine new knowledge obtained
○ Adjusted to more effectively determine degree of understanding
of the information presented
Suggestions for Future
Interventions
● Because some Kid’s Cafe sites were more orderly than others,
the effectiveness of teaching varied.
○ For instance, at some locations the children all remained in
the room and were attentive for the duration of the
presentation, versus other locations the children would
come and go freely during the presentation, missing
valuable information.
○ This affected the results of our pre and post tests if not all
the children were present for the duration of the
presentation.
Suggestions for Future
Interventions
● Enforcing a more structured environment for teaching at all
the Kid’s Cafe locations is our first suggestion for future
interventions
○ By communicating with the staff in charge of each Kid’s
Cafe location about this, this would hopefully keep children
more attentive and engaged in learning, making teaching
most effective.
Suggestions for Future
Interventions
● Implementation of permanent nutritional education is the next
intervention
○ We also found that the children did not receive any
nutritional education at the Kid's Cafe prior to us teaching
them.
○ Since many of the children indicated that they enjoyed
learning about nutrition from us, we believe that
implementation of permanent nutritional education would
be beneficial.
Suggestions for Future
Interventions
● Incorporating more educational games into our teaching is our
final intervention
○ This may have helped engage the children in learning and
kept them more attentive during the duration of the
presentations.
○ These children had arrived to the Kid’s Cafe locations right
after spending eight hours in school, so many of them were
more interested in playing games than hearing lectures
about nutrition.
Questions?