Program Delivery
SNAP-Ed helps reduce the incidence of obesity and chronic disease by improving dietary habits and increasing physical activity. We equip program participants with life skills that help them stretch their food budget, improve food safety, and feel empowered as consumers to make healthy choices. We work with people across the lifespan, from early childhood to senior citizens. You’ll find our programs wherever people live, learn, work, play, shop, and eat. We use different educational strategies to reach our audiences, including direct delivery and social marketing. At the population and community level, our programs focus on policy, systems, and environmental interventions that can create positive systemic change.
LGU SNAP-Ed strives to create positive behavior change from the bottom up, from the top down, and all points in between. We are the bridge between local issues and innovative answers through the power of LGU research. You can learn about LGU SNAP-Ed goals and how we deliver the program in this section of the website.
1.7M
participants through direct education
25,000+
sites nationwide
35%
increased physical activity and reduced sedentary behaviors
40%
increased consumption of F&Vs and drank fewer sugar-sweetened beverages
50%
read nutrition labels
60%
used sales or coupons to save money
Healthy Eating
A central component of LGU SNAP-Ed is improving nutritional quality and dietary habits, as a way to reduce obesity and chronic disease. LGU SNAP-Ed participants learn about the importance of consuming healthy foods and limiting less healthy foods.
Obesity is a public health crisis in the U.S., with substantial social and economic costs. Our nation has among the developed world’s highest rates of obesity and chronic disease, driven in part by inadequate nutrition, excess calories, and insufficient physical activity. More than 40 percent of the nation’s adults are considered overweight or obese. Nearly one in three of the nation’s children are considered overweight or obese. The burdens of obesity and chronic disease are borne unevenly across the U.S. population. Lower-income and communities of color are inordinately impacted, experiencing higher rates of obesity and chronic disease.
Because nutrition education in childhood is critical, the most common SNAP-Ed direct delivery sites are those that serve youth: schools, early care, and childcare settings, and before- and after-school programs. Fully 68 percent of SNAP-Ed participants are children, aged preschool through 17 years.
Physical Activity
While dietary decisions play a major role in obesity and chronic disease, inadequate physical activity is also a contributing factor. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that only 1 in 4 U.S. adults achieves the minimum recommended physical activity.
LGU SNAP-Ed programs focus on helping individuals of all ages with actionable strategies that can increase physical activity and reduce sedentary time. LGU SNAP-Ed encourages behavior change at the individual level, but also at the community level, through our PSE work. PSE work focuses on improved access to physical activity, with community-level responses such as safe parks, walking trails, and other enhanced public spaces that encourage people to move.
Food Security and Food Resource Management
Access to adequate food is a national problem, with the USDA ERS reporting that more than 11 percent of U.S. households were food insecure for at least part of the time during 2018. Thirty-five percent of U.S. households that fell below the poverty line experienced food insecurity that same year. Black and Hispanic households, urban and rural households, and single-parent households are more likely to be food insecure.
LGU SNAP-Ed participants acquire critical life skills that can enhance their knowledge and power as consumers. The program provides information about budgeting, understanding nutrition labels, using coupons and sales, and other techniques that enable participants to maintain a healthy lifestyle on limited financial resources. At the household level, we help people make shopping decisions that are nutritionally and financially beneficial.
Food Safety
The Centers for Disease Control estimate that 48 million Americans contract a foodborne illness each year, with 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths. Children, older adults, and pregnant women are especially vulnerable.
LGU SNAP-Ed programs teach participants how to handle, clean, store, and cook foods in safe ways. These safety programs may also include information about allergens, emergency preparation, and recently, how to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. These practices are shared in the context of home, retail sites, community and volunteer events, meal delivery, and other environments where unsafe handling may increase the risk of foodborne illness.
Direct Education
SNAP-Ed meets people where they are. Programs take place in communities where people eat, learn, live, play, shop, and work.
Schools and childcare sites are the most frequently used locations for direct delivery education programs. But SNAP-Ed programs are also delivered at congregate meal sites, senior nutrition centers, and at USDA-sponsored summer meal sites located in communities across the country.
Our LGU SNAP-Ed educators work in:
SNAP-Ed activities are as varied as the communities they serve and engage people across the lifespan. We work with young children, youth, adults, seniors, and audiences who are differently abled. We provide education to individuals, groups, and in family settings. All of our programs equip and empower people to take charge of their health and their food budget.
- Schools
- Early care and education facilities
- Before- and after-school programs
- Community and recreation centers
- Family resource centers
- Job training sites
- Veterans services offices
- Public libraries
- Extension offices
- Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clinics
- Colleges and universities
- Parks and open spaces
- School and community gardens
Social Marketing
Increasingly, social marketing strategies are used in LGU SNAP-Ed to share educational messages and encourage population-level change. These efforts combine commercial marketing with public health approaches. Methods may include a social media presence and campaigns; websites; paid or public service advertising (PSAs); and earned media. Public health approaches emphasize consumer engagement, community development, the power of public-private partnerships, and PSE.
Social marketing has significant impacts. A survey completed by LGUs in 23 states showed SNAP-Ed content achieved 27.6M impressions in FY 2019.
Social marketing strategies have proven effective in reaching target populations in a variety of settings. This has been especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can learn more about successful social marketing models in the Impacts section.
Policy, Systems, and Environmental Change
LGU SNAP-Ed seeks to create positive change at the population level through public health and structural interventions. This model – Policy, Systems, and Environmental change (PSE) – improves aspects of environments in which people live, learn, work, play, shop, and eat. PSEs influence the community in holistic ways, by addressing nutrition, health, and physical activity behaviors through public health and structural program interventions.
An example of a successful PSE program is Voices for Food, a multi-state effort. The program enhances food security and the availability of healthy food in rural communities by encouraging policy changes in food pantries. These changes increase the availability of healthy foods. Community coaches address food systems issues by focusing on local food policy, and make environmental changes, such as the addition of community gardens.
You can learn more about other successful PSE models in the Impacts section.
Changes Due to COVID-19
SNAP-Ed has not stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are finding new and creative ways to deliver educational programs, provide participants with opportunities to try healthy foods, and implement PSEs. An important part of our response to the crisis has been to leverage our partnerships and relationships to increase community access to healthy foods, as rates of hunger have sharply increased across the nation. Here are a few examples of our work during the pandemic:
- The University of the District of Columbia SNAP-Ed team has provided monthly nutrition education videos to share with students and live, virtual nutrition classes. The teacher training toolkit and nutrition curricula were adapted to online flipbooks.
- The North Carolina University SNAP-Ed team has provided “COVID-19 Steps to Health” content and programming via videos shared on a YouTube channel. Recorded classes include a food demonstration and physical activity break. SNAP-Ed educators are encouraged to offer live “office hours” for participants.
- Louisiana State University SNAP-Ed educators teamed with community partners to stencil socially-distanced play spaces at schools and public places.
- The University of Wyoming SNAP-Ed team delivered programming about emergency assistance via Facebook Live.