The Center for Excellence in Public Health (CEPH) had a strong presence at the national annual meeting of SNAP-Ed implementing agencies held virtually from February 1st through 3rd. Maine SNAP-Ed, implemented by the university through a contract with Maine’s Office for Family Independence, addresses food insecurity and obesity prevention in low-resource communities across the state. The funding comes for the USDA and is granted to over 160 agencies in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the Territory of Guam. Implementing agencies include universities, non-profits, state health and agriculture departments, and tribal-serving organizations. The Association of SNAP Nutrition Education Administrators (ASNNA) brings member implementing agencies together annually to stay abreast of policy issues and advance best practices.
Public health approaches to alleviate hunger are especially important during the pandemic, and adapting interventions to address COVID-19 was a theme of the conference, along with equity in programming and planning. CEPH staff presented on work related to social marketing and media, program evaluation, COVID-19 impact on program delivery, and virtual training strategies. Panel presentations highlighted work completed this past year through research and practice collaborations with academic peers from ten partnering universities, sharing lessons learned and emerging evidence. CEPH’s Senior Research Associates Pamela Bruno and Kira Rodriguez presented on their work, as did Hannah Ruhl, the program’s Obesity Prevention Coordinator, and Emily Estell, a nutrition educator from UNE’s Coastal Healthy Communities Coalition at the College of Osteopathic Medicine.
The following panel and poster presentations were shared at the 2021 ASNNA virtual annual conference:
o Pamela Bruno, MPH, co-authored and presented Best Practices for Measuring Environmental Level Indicators in the SNAP-Ed Evaluation Framework, featuring evaluation tools and methods for measuring outcomes related to policy, systems, and environmental changes designed to create healthy local communities.
o Kira Rodriguez, MHS, co-authored and presented Design, Implementation, and Results of a Joint Cross-State Evaluation on the Impacts and Adaptations Made to SNAP-Ed Programming During COVID-19, highlighting findings from a five-state collaborative evaluation of pandemic impact on SNAP-Ed programming.
o Hannah Ruhl, MPH, co-authored and presented Social Marketing Campaigns: Amplifying SNAP-Ed Reach and Outcomes, demonstrating how campaigns can be used within multilevel interventions, with examples of evaluation methods and outcomes.
o Emily Adrienne Estell, RDN, MPH co-authored and presented Virtual Discussion Forums as a Training Tool Building SNAP-Ed practitioner engagement and capacity through skill sharing and brainstorming especially during times of great change, a poster sharing the value of structured virtual practitioner peer support for skill building and program improvement.
For more information on Maine SNAP-Ed or presentations shared at the ASNNA annual meeting, contact Lori Kaley, MS, RDN, LD, MSB, Program Manager, Maine SNAP-Ed, CEPH, 207.221.4551 | lkaley@une.edu