Author: UTK MCH Nutrition Trainees

Promoting Healthy Weight Colloquium 3.0: A Socio-Ecological Perspective – Policy at All Levels

 

The Promoting Healthy Weight (PHW) Colloquia are a biannual series, held each spring and fall, that highlights the latest research in maternal and child health nutrition. The Colloquia are for practitioners, health agency employees, students, faculty, researchers, families, and the community. Viewers can attend the event onsite or view the live or archived webcast remotely.

On Friday, March 29, 2019, The University of Tennessee’s MCH Nutrition Leadership team along with the Department of Nutrition hosted the Promoting Healthy Weight Colloquium. The event, which launched our 3rd PHW Colloquia series focused on illustrating how policy is used to promote healthy weight in the MCH population at all levels of the Socio-Ecological Model (SEM) by Urie Bronfenbrenner. 

The Spring 2019 colloquium featured five speakers, which included distinguished faculty from the Departments of Child & Family Studies and Public Health at UT, Dr. Hillary Fouts and Dr. Carole Myers, who introduced the Socio-Ecological model as a framework for promoting healthy weight and discussed how policy can influence healthy weight promotion at all levels. The next speaker, Dr. Karla Shelnutt, from The University of Florida provided an overview of the extension program and SNAP-Ed interventions from the individual level to a Policy, Systems, and Environmental (PSE) approach. Our fourth speaker, Jennifer Russomanno a DrPH student in the Public Health Department, presented on ways to connect participants in the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program with local farmers. To conclude, Leslie Lewis, from the Louisiana Department of Health spoke about the Collaborative Improvement & Innovative Network (CoIIN) and its role in implementation of state-level policies for the promotion of children’s healthy weight.

To view the archived Spring 2019 colloquium, please visit the link below:
PHW3.0: A Socio-Ecological Perspective—Policy at All Levels

UTK Former Trainee Spotlight: Shanthi Appelö

Shanthi Appelö is an alumnus of the Maternal and Child Health Leadership traineeship. She completed both her Bachelor and Master of Science degrees at the University of Tennessee. Currently, she is a registered dietitian nutritionist working at the Knox County Health Department. In this blog post, Shanthi describes her experience as a former trainee, her current & upcoming projects, and recent recognition. 

It is the best feeling every time I counsel a patient and see them thrive and reach their goals. Even more exciting is knowing that I get to have an impact on a policy, system or environment to influence more than just an individual, but a population. This very concept is what drove me to want to pursue a career in public health. As a MCH nutrition trainee, I was exposed to Knoxville’s diverse population, health equity particularly facing the maternal and child population. The traineeship offered me the experiences and opportunities to explore how to start solving our community’s problems.

Fast forward to today, I am a registered dietitian nutritionist working at the Knox County Health Department. My job has a clinical and public health component as my day-to-day varies from providing clinical nutrition consultation in our Centers of Excellence for HIV and AIDS clients to planning, overseeing and providing training in public health prevention programming to support policy, systems and environmental interventions to childcare facilities. My position also has a media component, where I appear in the local news at times and write a monthly column for our local business journal, Knox.Biz. Other parts of my job include helping our very own staff to become healthy by creating and leading an evidence-based weight loss program.

The MCH traineeship taught me to seize every opportunity and provided me with training in maternal and child leadership to where I can influence population-wide outcomes. I have joined our Health Department’s quality improvement committee, serve on the local Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Board as legislative chair and served in leadership positions on the Tennessee Public Health Association Board. I was honored to receive the award for Knoxville’s Recognized Young Dietitian of the Year Award in 2019 for my diverse job experiences during school, for being eager to learn as I earned the certificate of training in adult obesity interventions, for joining many leadership roles in my work and beyond, and for making a difference in the community with a focus on health equity.

Coming up, my team is pursuing a Tennessee Department of Health’s (TDH) Project Diabetes grant focused on diabetes prevention. My highlights in the application will focus on diabetes prevention while addressing health equity in the maternal and child population. Another TDH grant fast approaching: I have applied for a grant that focuses on diabetes and cardiovascular disease outreach, resources and treatment.

UTK Trainee Spotlight: Rachel Klenzman

Rachel Klenzman is a first year dual Master of Science in Public Health Nutrition and Master of Public Health student and an MCH Nutrition trainee at the University of Tennessee. She will also be completing a dietetic internship through UT in 2021. Rachel received her Bachelor of Science degree in Dietetics from Ashland University in Ashland, OH in May 2018. She hopes to use her education and training to improve health outcomes for mothers and infants.

In January, I attended the first general East Tennessee Childhood Obesity Coalition (ETCOC) meeting of the year. The Childhood Obesity Coalition, as it was previously known, began under the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital in 2008. In the Spring of 2018, our University of Tennessee MCH Nutrition Leadership and Education Program faculty, Drs. Marsha Spence and Betsy Anderson Steeves, and funded trainees have assumed facilitating the coalition and it has been renamed ETCOC. The Coalition’s mission is to prevent and reduce childhood obesity by promoting healthy, active lifestyles through family, community and interprofessional collaborations. The vision is to see that all children in East Tennessee have access to nourishing foods, opportunities for physical activity, and community resources to support healthy weight. ETCOC’s overall goal is to facilitate collaborations that maximize funding to reduce childhood obesity in East Tennessee.

There are currently three active committees – policy, assessment, and outreach – each with unique goals and objectives in efforts to support the coalition’s mission and vision. During the meeting, we reviewed the direction of ETCOC with the coalition members and committee chairs. Next, each committee brainstormed specific ways to meet their respective goals during breakout sessions. As a coalition, we decided to reach out to more community members and organizations in order to increase participation and commitment. I am very excited to be a part of ETCOC and see how we are able to amp it up and make an impact in our very own community!  As a member of the outreach committee, I am especially excited because we already have so many great ideas about how to maximize resources and make them attainable for families, teachers, and the community, for the benefit of children in Knoxville and in East Tennessee.

 

For more information, check out our website at https://etncoc.org

UTK Former Trainee Spotlight: Ruth Wooten

Ruth Wooten, an alumnus of the Maternal and Child Health Leadership traineeship, is a registered dietitian nutritionist and completed her Master’s program in Public Health Nutrition at the University of Tennessee. This blog post describes her recent publication/thesis research.

Upon entering graduate school, I was not convinced that I wanted to pursue the thesis track for my degree. I certainly found research interesting but was not positive that I wanted to tackle such a daunting task and bury myself in one specific topic. My major professor, Dr. Betsy Anderson Steeves, had a project for our research lab that was to assess food insecurity rates on campus to contribute to a regional wide survey being administered by members of the Southeastern Universities Consortium on Hunger, Poverty, and Nutrition. I was assigned as the lead on the project and became more invested in the research. Eventually, I decided to take this research project and form it into my thesis research. Instead of only assessing food insecurity rates at our campus, I decided, with the assistance of my committee, that it would be advantageous to assess rates at the three other campuses in our university system to capture a larger population. During my first semester as a MCH Nutrition trainee (spring 2017), I attended our annual MCH grantees meeting and had several conversations with fellow trainees and directors who were assessing similar information at their universities. I was thankful to have a network of researchers pursuing a topic that could unveil information beneficial to the public health nutrition community. The MCH training grant exposed me to a community of graduate students and nutrition professionals from across the country that added value to my research process.

During the fall semester of 2017, an online survey was administered to over 38,000 students to assess their food insecurity rates as well as factors that related to their food insecurity status. We had a fairly good response rate (12.5%)1 for online surveys and resulted in a large amount of data to analyze. I analyzed data and wrote my thesis during the spring semester of 2018. After successfully defending in April 2018, I began finalizing my thesis for publication. The various tasks that I completed as a trainee were helpful in developing my skills to research, write a manuscript, and complete the publication process. Just a few months ago, we were told that the manuscript was accepted for publication. I realized that this research was important and could make an impact on a larger scale than just my department or university.

Without providing too many spoilers, the study revealed that 36% of students were food insecure, meaning that they did not have adequate access to food to live a normal life.1 Several factors were significantly associated with an increased likelihood of experiencing food insecurity, including previous food insecurity before attending college, financial factors, and self-reported grade point average.1 The full study can be found at the citation at the bottom of this post.

Since the completion of this project, several exciting things have happened on campus at the University of Tennessee, including: an on-campus task force for student hunger and homelessness, an interview with Dr. Anderson Steeves on NPR, and the implementation of the 2-item food insecurity screener on intake forms at the student health center.

1Wooten R, Spence M, Colby S, Anderson Steeves E. Assessing food insecurity prevalence and associated factors among college students enrolled in a university in the southeast USA. Public Health Nutrition. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1368980018003531

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrition/article/assessing-food-insecurity-prevalence-and-associated-factors-among-college-students-enrolled-in-a-university-in-the-southeast-usa/C7CBF2D99C7E2A0F568334554787D031

UTK Trainee Spotlight: Veronica Rubio

Veronica is a first-year graduate student in the Nutrition program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). Veronica also received her Bachelor of Science in Nutrition at UTK in 2014. She then went on to complete her dietetic internship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Veronica worked as a registered dietitian in the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program in South Carolina, and served as a clinical dietitian in the island of American Samoa. Veronica has been a MCH Nutrition trainee since August 2018.

My earliest experience working with the MCH population dates back to my volunteer work as an undergraduate. I worked as a research assistant with Dr. Marsha Spence (UTK) for the Cardiac Club Program, which is an afterschool nutrition and physical activity intervention program for elementary school-age children in fourth and fifth grades. Additionally, I worked as a nutrition educator for the Healthy Kid’s Club program ran by East Tennessee Children’s Hospital. For this program, I helped plan and teach weekly nutrition lessons and games that focused on movement and physical activity. My interest in working with this population grew throughout my dietetic internship, both in my community and clinical rotations, where I chose a concentration in pediatrics/pediatric oncology. My experience in public health nutrition further developed with my work as an RD for the WIC program.

So far, as a trainee, one of the projects I am leading is the diversity recruitment and retention committee. The committee is comprised of faculty members from both the Departments of Nutrition and Public Health at UTK. Currently, the committee is planning strategies to increase recruitment efforts of racially/ethnically diverse students into the dietetics profession. One of these strategies includes visiting historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the surrounding states. Another strategy is to create an infographic to disseminate to Hispanic-serving institutions and tribal colleges/universities that are further away. I am excited about the many opportunities the traineeship offers, and am looking forward to increasing my knowledge, refining my leadership skills, and better serving the MCH population.

UTK Former Trainee Spotlight: Amber Ford

Amber Ford, an alumnus of the Maternal and Child Health Leadership traineeship, is a registered and licensed dietitian at the Knox County Health Department. At the University of Tennessee, Amber completed a dual Master’s program in Public Health and Public Health Nutrition, and completed the dietetic internship. As a Public Health Educator, Amber has focused on school health for the past three years.  

I completed the dual master’s program in public health and nutrition along with the dietetic internship through the University of Tennessee in December 2015. Serving as an MCH trainee was one of the biggest highlights of my time in the program, and the training and experience I received have been so valuable in my current position. I’ve worked as a Public Health Educator focused on school health at the Knox County Health Department for the past three years.

In my role, I specifically partner with Knox County Community Schools to help improve the health of students and families as it relates to nutrition and physical activity. The Community Schools initiative aims to use public schools as hubs for community resources to improve health and academic success. This involves working alongside teachers, students, and families to identify their specific needs and bringing in partners and resources to address these needs. We currently have 18 Community Schools in Knox County, and most of my work is aimed at creating and enhancing access to places for physical activity, promoting increased physical activity and physical education, creating supportive nutrition environments, and increasing access to healthy foods for students and families.

Throughout my time as a trainee, I had the opportunity to lead the cultural and linguistic competency workshops, Interactions that Make a Difference, for graduate students and frontline staff of health departments in East Tennessee. Countless times, I’ve used the skills I developed in presenting and leading trainings for diverse audiences, but I also use the cultural competency knowledge I gained on a daily basis. Our Community Schools are some of the most diverse and economically disadvantaged in our county, and the knowledge and skills provided by these trainings have improved my interactions with the students and families I serve and have helped me develop more culturally competent interventions.

Further, my time as a trainee equipped me with other skills for which I am consistently grateful. Working with a team to plan and implement the bi-annual Promoting Healthy Weight Colloquium improved my long-range planning skills, efficiency, and ability to delegate and recognize the strengths and weaknesses of others and myself. Assessment and evaluation of community needs and effectiveness of our interventions are important for sustained funding and effective utilization of limited resources, and I’m able to rely on the practices of regular evaluation and responding to evaluation outcomes used throughout my time as a trainee. All and all, I can’t say enough about how much serving as an MCH trainee impacted me and shaped the work I do. Well worth every minute!