Community Health Grant Proposal

Executive Summary
The name of the project is The Healthy Families Program and is requesting twenty-four hundred dollars ($2400) in grant funding. The purpose of the project is to promote the development and maintenance of healthy lifestyles and reduce disparities in healthcare. Four families will receive instruction and guidance over a four month period culminating in the families sharing their experiences going through the program with the community in a public presentation. Health experts, technologists, culinary experts, and library-media specialists will directly support the families with ongoing education classes. Families will receive instruction in nutrition and healthy lifestyles; instruction in the technical and practical use of digital tools and technologies; and demonstrations in the creation of healthy and nutritious meals. Families will implement this instruction for a variety of purposes: to discover and record their health data; to track and find informative trends in that data; to share their personal stories as they happen, and to create positive lifestyle changes such as meal selection and activity levels. The families will participate in a celebratory Grand Reveal presentation at the end of the program that publicly showcases their journeys and accomplishments through the program. The presentation would include information graphics showing the health data that the families created and recorded, before/after pictures, testimonials, picture and video documents, timelines, retrospectives, and new hopes, along with audience participation. The Grand Reveal would also be an opportunity to debrief the families and to gain their insight into the effectiveness of different aspects of the program and their ideas to improve the program in the future.

By making the Grand Reveal a large public celebration, the event acts as a recruitment opportunity for continuing the program into the future, with a new batch of families, and elevates the social status of the original families involved, perhaps making them powerful symbols to the community of real, local, known people, who have been able to change to a healthy lifestyle.

Program Overview
The Healthy Families Program The purpose of this grant is to promote the development and maintenance of healthy lifestyles and reduce disparities in healthcare. The goal will be achieved through implementation of a program that centers on education and lifestyle changes, including enhanced awareness, behavior changes and creating environments that support good health practices. A technology component of the program that is learned in more than one step and with multiple levels of analysis so that learners can apply the content and skills in a way that changes thinking and behavior has multiple benefits. It will empower the participants to share their journey in the program through digital social media. It will provide the skills to find information the families need to make healthy decisions, and the tools to utilize that information to make informed decisions. A health education component will activate deep learning for participants as they learn to approach their health from a multi-disciplinary perspective, and fill in relevant learning gaps of which they are not aware. It will introduce the learners to a complex process of understanding the many facets of a healthy lifestyle and challenge them to think holistically about their health and their impact on their families health. A culinary expert will provide food and meal preparation demonstrations to broaden the

families knowledge base of what constitutes healthy eating and build confidence and resiliency, both needed to resist unhealthy living. The instructional experts will focus on motivation, connecting concepts to the families personal experiences, and creating a realworld, contextualized learning environment to promote high levels of learning. The Edelman Health Barometer 2011, a comprehensive, 12-country, 15,000-person survey on health attitudes and trends explored how social interactions and technologies can spread good health and provides insights into evolving definitions of health and the imperative and opportunity for business, government and institutions, an opportunity this program seeks to seize. The Healthy Families Program will address several of the top health behavior change motivators that the Edelman survey found. The top aspirational change motivator was people knowing long-term health benefits, which will be addressed by the programs health educator, who can explain the myriad longitudinal benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Making a personal commitment was the second most impactful aspirational motivator, which program participants engage in when they commit to the program. Social influence motivators that are addressed in the program include: teaming up; benefitting others; receiving praise or recognition; and joining a support network, all of which the participants should achieve. The program includes a dimension of using tools and technology to support healthy behavior change, which is the second most impactful informational change motivator, with the tangential benefit that these skills can be incredibly useful to the participants outside of the program.

The Healthy Families Program directly addresses seven of the eighteen top change motivators in the Edelman study, and will indirectly address other meaningful motivators such as physical appearance, participants finding out that they are at risk of disease, fearing relationship loss, and indirect positive and negative incentives. Outside of the Edelman study, the greatest accomplishment for the family might be going through the whole program together, a very personal journey, fraught with challenges, with long-lasting positive results. The Centers for Disease Control and Preventions find that the percentage of children and adolescents who are obese has more than tripled in recent decades, and most young people do not meet recommendations for healthy eating. Overweight and obesity are strongly associated with increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, asthma, joint problems, and poor health status. Students are too influenced by the health habits of their family to participate in a health program in isolation, and the participation of the whole family will be a force multiplier for positive change. A good health status is paramount to a persons happiness and benefits the whole of society by reducing the resources needed for healthcare. The Healthy Families Program will span four months from September 2013 through December 2013, with the Grand Reveal celebration happening right before school comes back in session after winter break in January. The families selected will have at least one child in the local middle school. The targeted demographic for this granted program will be middle school students whos familys health profiles indicate that their participation will be of tremendous benefit, especially in underserved populations and non-traditional family structures. Where students excitement and determination to participate in this program are evident, that should be considered in the determination of who gets to participate. Priority will go to the families

that showed indications of commitment, including punctuality and thoroughness and timeliness of requested information. The total number of participants will be approximately twenty people. The Healthy Families Program will engage learners in meaningful project based learning to impart deep learning so that learners will change their thinking and behaviors. Initial and ongoing whole-group health education lessons will challenge learners to analyze the complex interactions of the foods they eat on a day-to-day and ongoing basis. Learners will assimilate their prior health knowledge with new information to make informed food choices. Learners will actively engage in their learning by changing their diet and independently making nutrition choices based on their learning. They will learn the characteristics of a healthy lifestyle and how to manifest them. Multiple technologies, both online and off, will be utilized throughout the program and a partnership with the local library will help to ensure that the families have the opportunity to use these technologies, independent of whether they already have them at home. The library media-specialist, along with the technologist, will hold whole-group classes with all of the family members to train them on these technologies. One offline technology used will be a pedometer to track the number of steps each participant takes throughout the day, providing them with health data that they will otherwise not have access to, and providing a baseline of activity that may be adjusted. A digital food scale will measure portion sizes so that accurate measurements can be taken and nutritional data recorded. Spreadsheet programs will be taught as ways means to record and tracking this data, as well as for meal-planning uses.

Online resources and beneficial websites will be introduced and participants will be guided through creating accounts and entering in data. The participants will share a social network exclusively amongst themselves, created on Ning.com, that will be utilized to encourage each other, share recipes and tips, to commiserate when the program seems difficult, and share joy when everyone has reached a milestone moment. The participants will also be trained on the use of the microblog Twitter, which they can utilize from their phones or a computer, to share information and encouragement, and as an avenue to engage with each other and the community. The specific objectives of this program are to forge powerful connections and inspire action, to drive societal change, beginning with young adults, and to generate and record health data that can be used to inform lifestyle changes. Evaluation of these objectives will be achieved through recording health data on spreadsheet programs, on health tracking websites such as Livestrong.com, and formative assessments compiled through social media. Summative assessment evaluation will emphasize the growth of healthy lifestyle indicators determined by the health expert and data tracking of social media use by the families, along with testimonials from the families illuminating any unforeseen benefits of the program. The programs Grand Reveal will be an opportunity to showcase the results of the program and provide a lunch pad to its sustainability. Along with the next batch of program participants, the Grand Reveal will provide a forum to solicit new community partnerships and funding/resource opportunities. Through completion of the program there will be several expected outcomes. It is expected that all participants will show increased knowledge and understanding of what

constitutes a healthy lifestyle, as well as exemplify those qualities in their daily lives. Assessment of these expectations can be accomplished with pre- and post-program surveys, documentation of recorded data, and digitally documented testimonials. Participants are also expected to show increased understanding of and use of tools and technologies that can assist with their healthy lifestyle, including the use of the pedometer, data entry in computer programs and websites, and the number and quality of their social media interactions. While it cannot be expected that the families will be able to match the quality or consistency of the culinary expert, through the culinary demonstrations, in conjunction with nutrition education, it can be expected that there will be a change in the nutritional quality of the family meals and general eating habits. Further objectives and outcomes may be solicited by other vested stakeholders during the initial capacity building stages which may bolster specific research aims. The Program aligns with the Common Core English Language Arts Standards in multiple ways. Specifically, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RST.9-10.1, which will be accomplished as the learners will be able to cite specific evidence in the nutrition education materials where evidence is given for the healthful benefits of good nutrition. Through the program learners will be able to communicate the complex concepts of proper nutrition in their own words and by sharing their personal stories via social media, aligning outcomes with standard CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RST.9-10.2 which asks learners to provide accurate summaries of informational texts. Learners will also follow a complex multistep procedure precisely, take measurements, and perform technical tasks as they learn from the culinary expert how to create healthy meals, aligning with Standard CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RST.9-10.3. Participants will also learn health terms (jargon);learn to

understand and analyze nutrition labels; learn the best uses of their social media tools (NIng, Twitter), and learn how to share hyperlinked media online, all of which fall fulfill Common Core and/or NETS*S standards.

Detailed Budget
Money will be used to build professional capacity in the areas of the program that deal with nutritional education, technology education and use, food preparation, and community involvement including the local library and local professionals. Partnerships will be sought with local health departments, private industry, the local media, and other local community-based organizations and associations in an effort to find mutual interests and secure materials, information, and assistance. Technical assistance, training, information sharing, technology transfer, and materials development needs to be coordinated from the very beginning so that the program can operate in the most effective manner. Stakeholders would meet at the end of each month to look at new data as a team and compare it to the goals of the program and share their ideas for the duration of the program. These meetings also provide an opportunity for systematic inquiry and action research aligned to each stakeholders interests as they so choose. Grant money will be used to compensate the technologist, health expert, and culinary expert on a per class basis at $100 per session. Over the four months the technologist would hold six classes ranging from the introduction of each technology through to the completion of families digital media at a cost of $600. The technology classes would be held at the end of each month and twice within the first two weeks at the start of the program. The health expert would hold six classes throughout the four months at a cost of $600, and on the same schedule as the technologist. The culinary expert would hold

three classes throughout the four months, twice in the first month and once after the second month, and will also provide a demonstration at the Grand Reveal for a cost of $400. Equipment needed includes twenty pedometers at approximately $5 a piece, for $100 total. Each family would receive a digital food scale at approximately $15 a piece, for $60 total. Each family would receive a digital camcorder at approximately $50 a piece, for $200 total. Additionally, materials for the culinary demonstrations, including produce to send home with the families ($100 total/per) and for the Grand Reveal demonstration ($200) would total approximately $500. The total cost of the proposed project is approximately $ 2460. The school district would contribute paper, printer, and Microsoft Office Suite, as well as lighting and maintenance costs for providing space as necessary to hold classes and the culminating Grand Reveal. It is anticipated that through initial capacity building, stakeholder partnerships will be able to provide further monetary, informational, and service resources as needed.