Part of the SNAP-Ed Strategies & Interventions Toolkit.*
Cooking Matters for WIC Clinics (CM for WIC) is a direct education intervention designed to enhance the WIC client experience and to improve maternal and child diets and health through improved knowledge and self-efficacy for healthy eating on a budget, increased WIC voucher redemption (particularly the fruit and vegetable vouchers), and increased WIC client retention beyond the first year postpartum. CM for WIC includes nutrition education and hands-on cooking classes adapted from the Cooking Matters for Parents (CMP) curriculum to correspond with the time frame of other client classes offered at WIC clinics, Cooking Matters at the Store for WIC Parents (CMATS WIC) pop-up grocery store tours in clinics, and customized survey tools.
CM for WIC targets WIC clients at the clinics where they receive WIC services and pick up their WIC vouchers. The CM for WIC program offers nutritional supports to families, mothers and children that are eligible for WIC and SNAP benefits. The intervention was designed to be facilitated by WIC nutritionists in WIC clinic settings – urban, suburban, and rural.
Evaluation materials include two evaluation reports, as well as a pre-post nutrition education session survey, an intercept survey, and CMATS WIC post-tour survey data collection tools.
Both the pre-post nutrition education session surveys, post pop-up tour surveys, and intercept surveys conducted periodically in clinic waiting areas by the evaluation team include items to assess acceptability of the CM for WIC intervention. Pre-post session and post-tour surveys collect what participants liked and what they think needs to be improved about the class. Participants most commonly state that they like hands-on cooking, learning about nutrition labels and unit pricing, learning new recipes to share with family, and like the way the instructor taught the class. Intercept surveys ask about which classes or services clients find most valuable at the WIC clinic as well as gage awareness of and interest in CM for WIC classes. Intercept surveys showed that only a small percentage of clients had participated in CM for WIC classes, and majority of those clients enjoyed it; more promotional strategies are needed to increase awareness of and participation in these classes.
*SNAP-Ed Strategies & Interventions: An Obesity Prevention Toolkit for States is a compilation of interventions. The toolkit was developed by USDA's Food and Nutrition Service, The Association of SNAP-Ed Nutrition Education Administrators (ASNNA), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for Training and Research Translation (Center TRT), and the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR), a partnership between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes for Health (NIH), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the USDA. It is designed and updated to help state SNAP-Ed administrative and implementing agencies identify evidence-based obesity prevention programs and policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) strategies and interventions to include in their SNAP-Ed plans.