Part of the SNAP-Ed Strategies & Interventions Toolkit.*
Healthy Choices Catch On, formerly known as They Learn from Watching You, is a social marketing campaign designed to influence nutrition and physical activity behaviors among SNAP-Ed eligible residents in Michigan. This campaign has been effectively engaging Michigan residents since 2006. Ongoing evaluation suggested that, though the messaging remained impactful, priority audiences may be building message fatigue. Beginning in 2018, new messages using the tagline Healthy Choices Catch On were tested with images of children and parents being active and eating healthy together as an extension of the core messages used since 2012.
The campaign uses USDA core messages to emphasize parents as a child’s role model and first teacher. Primary intervention objectives are:
- Influence healthy eating and physical activity behaviors of SNAP-Ed eligible populations.
- Reinforce the importance of parents and caregivers as healthy behavior role models for children.
- Promote messages aligned with SNAP-Ed direct education and policy, systems, and environmental initiatives, creating community wrap-around.
Core messages of the 2020 Campaign are:
- Healthy Choices Catch On
- Show them the way: eat five a day
- Show them the way: go out and play
Messages are designed for adults, parents, and caregivers and delivered in community settings. The scope of the Campaign is adjusted annually, including the settings where it is delivered. Geotargeting is used to select billboards, transit signs, and social media buys in SNAP-eligible census tracts to reach priority populations.
The Transtheoretical Model (stages of change) is used to understand the influence of the Campaign on priority populations. The Stages of Change Model categorizes individuals’ readiness to make positive dietary and physical activity changes into one of five stages and is mediated by constructs including self-efficacy and the pros and cons of making a change. The goal of the Campaign is to help people progress along the stages of change towards increasing their healthy eating and physical activity behaviors.
*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.