Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Back to Search

Overview

Food Hero is a multi-channel social marketing campaign designed to change family and community behaviors. Food Hero includes an extensive evaluation process. The program is designed to increase fruit and vegetable consumption among low-income Oregonians, and components of the campaign have been used widely in other states and countries. 

Intervention Target Behavior: Healthy Eating, Food Insecurity/Food Assistance

SNAP-Ed Strategies: Direct Education, PSE Change, Social Marketing

Intervention Reach and Adoption

Food Hero targets mothers with children living in the home, comprehensively within their local community, aiming to reach mothers directly but also to reach sites within their community where they frequent (e.g. grocery stores, schools, churches, pantries, farmers markets, WIC).

Setting: Community-wide, Faith-based centers, Healthcare, Retail, Schools, Worksites, Pre-K & Childcare, Gardens (School/Community), Farmers Markets

Age/Population Group: Preschool, Elementary School, Middle School, High School, Pregnant/Breastfeeding, Parents/Caregivers, Adults, Older Adults, Unhoused

Race: All

Ethnicity: All

Intervention Components

Food Hero includes public event components plus PSE tools. Food Hero has a website where research tested tools are housed (content for campaign participants plus educators/partners in the community kit) and a social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram) that participants and partners can access. Within Food Hero lives healthy and tasty recipes, meal ideas, budgeting, shopping, and many more cooking tips and tools to attract families to Food Hero as their 'go to' website for everything food. Congruent tools exist to work on PSE change.

Intervention Materials

Food Hero offers a variety of intervention tools, such as: 

Materials can all be found within the Food Hero community kit website: https://foodhero.org/ 

Evidence Summary

An evaluation of the Food Hero social marketing campaign found that: 

  • More participants in intervention counties recalled the Food Hero name than participants in the control county (12% vs 3%) 
  • More participants in the intervention counties correctly interpreted the intended meaning of Food Hero compared to participants in the control county (60% vs 23%) 
  • 68% of participants in intervention counties recalled hearing or seeing at least one of the campaign messages 
  • Compared with control counties, participants in intervention counties had significantly higher confidence in serving balanced meals for their family (p=.03) and were more likely to report that canned fruit was just as healthy as fresh fruit (p=.01) 

Open Access Publication in Nutrients: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/8/9/562/htm

Annual reports can be found here: https://foodhero.org/annual-updates

Evidence Base: Research-Tested

Evaluation Indicators

Based on the SNAP-Ed Evaluation Framework, the following outcome indicators can be used to evaluate intervention progress and success.

 Readiness and Capacity - Short Term (ST)Changes - Medium Term (MT)Effectiveness and Maintenance - Long Term (LT)Population Results (R)
IndividualST1, ST2MT1, MT2LT1, LT2 
Environmental SettingsST6MT5LT5, LT7, LT8, LT9, LT11
Sectors of InfluenceST8MT12, MT13LT14, LT18
Evaluation Materials

A variety of evaluation tools, including a family dinner survey, tasting surveys, and parent recipe survey, are available as part of the Community Toolkit in the "evaluation tools" section: https://foodhero.org/community-toolkit   

Additional Information

Website: The Food Hero website (https://www.foodhero.org/) includes recipes, tips and tools, media materials, and a community toolkit. All campaign components are in English and Spanish.  Translated materials go through an extensive, multi-person/committee process.

Contact Person(s):

Lauren Tobey, MS, RD

Program Coordinator, Family & Community Health

Oregon State University

106 Ballard Hall Corvallis, OR 97331

Phone: 547-737-1017

Email: Food.Hero@oregonstate.edu
or Lauren.Tobey@oregonstate.edu  

 

*Updated as of August 28, 2023