Part of the SNAP-Ed Strategies & Interventions Toolkit.*
The Healthy Choices for Every Body (HCEB) is a direct education intervention designed to improve diet quality, physical activity, and food safety practices, as well as enhance food security and food resource management skills. HCEB incorporates lessons and activities that recognize participants’ experiences, skills, and knowledge; explains why, what, and how the nutrition education concepts presented relate to real-life situations; and includes active learning activities, hands-on practice, and demonstrations to help participants understand and apply content.
A 2016 quasi-experimental study found that HCEB was effective for improving the food resource management skills and food safety practices of participants. Propensity score matching showed baseline similarities and statistical balance between the characteristics of intervention and comparison groups. Independent-samples t tests and ANCOVA models showed that food resource management and food safety gain scores were statistically significantly higher for the intervention group (P < .001), with large effect sizes (d = 0.9). The group differences persisted even after controlling for race and age (manuscript).
A longitudinal evaluation of the impact of HCEB on participants’ food resource management skills indicated maintenance of outcomes. Findings of multilevel linear models showed a curvilinear trend where participants’ food resource management increased linearly over time, but the rate of increase slowed down as time progresses.
Materials available in both English and Spanish (selected handouts are also available in French, Swahili and Braille).
*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.