Take Charge of Your Health with Girls
in the Game & Union Park – Cooking for the Health of It!
Anastasia McGee RD, CDE, Director, Community Nutrition
Jessica Allender MS, RD, LDN, Nutrition Specialist
Chicago Partnership for Health Promotion
UIC Neighborhood Initiative Division of Community Health
845 South Damen Ave, Suite 530 (MC 802), Chicago, IL 60612
Background
Girls in the Game (GIG) provides and promotes sports & fitness
opportunities, health education and leadership
development to enhance the overall health and well being of girls in the city
of Chicago. Their two-fold purpose is
to: 1) ensure that adequate sports and fitness, leadership development, health
education and life skills programming
are made available to girls, and 2) reduce the barriers that young girls face
in sports and activities that promote
healthy lifestyle choices. GIG’s programs empower girls to make better
decisions with regards to their overall
health. GIG participants live in a cross section of neighborhoods on the north,
south and west sides of Chicago as
well as in the suburbs, 85% have family income below the poverty level, 47%
are African-American, and 38% are
Latina. GIG operates in the Union Park Field house on Chicago’s Near
West Side which also houses the Chicago
Park District Union Park drop-in after school program for girls and boys.
Project design and subject selection
In partnership with GIG and the
Union Park Field House drop-off program, dietitians from the University
of Illinois at Chicago–Chicago Partnership for Health Promotion designed
and implemented a 7-week cooking curriculum that
focuses on bringing nutrition recommendations to the table and empowering children
with the tools to choose
healthy lifestyles. This project was designed as a follow-up to an 8 week “Cooking
the Pyramid” curriculum that
was implemented in the fall 2004. Each session was delivered to the two groups
separately and consecutively on
Wednesday afternoons.
Each week, the children learn and practice a new recipe for healthy
snacks that they can make on their own at home
with limited supervision or assistance. In conjunction with each recipe, didactic
activities were developed to
highlight and reinforce nutrition and health messages implicit in the recipe.
For the 7th and final week of this
interactive cooking and health curricula, the parents of participants are invited
to both witness and partake in
sampling as the children present the recipes and health messages they have
learned.
Data collection and analysis
A 9 question multiple choice and true false quiz is being utilized as both
a pre- and post-test. For the assessment the
quiz was administered to the children prior to the first lesson. For summative
assessment the quiz was administered
to children and parents. Demographic and attendance data are also being collected.
Anticipated results
This 7 week session will culminate on March 9,
2005. We expect the children to improve their knowledge of
healthy lifestyle concepts, to increase their repertoire of producible healthy
snacks and to expand their understanding
of where nutrients come from in the food supply. We also expect that this program
will contribute to the building of
self esteem in the participants as they take charge of their health through
the creation of healthy snacks.
Furthermore, the health messages the children are learning may have influence
on the food and activity choices
parents and other members of the household make.
Significance of this work
This project contributes to the growing body
of evidence that when given the opportunity children of any
background can and will choose healthier lifestyles.
Acknowledgments
Chicago Partnership for Health Promotion, Girls in
the Game, Union Park, UIC-NI-Division of Community Health,
USDA-FSNE
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