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ugust was a busy month. The nutrition assistants continued their outreach. In addition to their normal education sites, they reported an increase in maternal child and early life skills requests. After talking with them, we all feel there is an increase in need for this focus on nutrition education. Both have been increasing the number of outreach events and classes at; Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), family coalitions, kids in the kitchen, community baby showers, maternity clinics, and the Department of Children and Families (DCF).
This month I continued connecting with community partners and getting involved in programs in the Wildcat District. Our connection to Crawford County Public Health and Live Well Crawford County (LWCC) is growing. I attended both the Live Well and Eat Well meetings this month and am planning to attend at least one of these groups each month. Additionally, I am going to have conversations with Brad Stroud and Matt O’Malley with LWCC about ways to increase healthy food access to more rural areas of Crawford County. I had a good discussion with Craig Chronister at the DCF about future program opportunities. They are currently piloting a program in Crawford County that may be a good opportunity for collaboration. Additionally, our connection with the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas is continuing to strengthen.
Outside of the people I am meeting, I am attending ¬SHIFT Labette County and working with the Family & Consumer Sciences (FCS) Team to help increase participation and diversify voices involved in the group. Another potential future opportunity came out of the Montgomery County Health Needs Assessment meeting. The information presented at the meeting gave us some potential areas of outreach in Montgomery County. Finally, I took part in a Webinar put on by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation Culture of Health on Improving Health Equity through Rural Economic Development.
Near the end of the month, I traveled to Manhattan for my New Agent Orientation. In addition to learning more about Kansas State University Research and Extension, this presented a great opportunity to learn from other areas of the state. I took every opportunity available to learn about topics to better the health of the Wildcat District. One thing I found particularly interesting was the ‘Evening at the Blue Zones.’ I am currently trying to see if and how we can slowly start a discussion around Blue Zones in the Wildcat District.
Finally, with the increased interest in maternal child education, the nutrition assistants and I attended a day-long course on the importance of breastfeeding education. With the increased interested the nutrition assistants are seeing on the topic, I thought it might be best for all of us to attend this course so they could have more tools to add to their tool kit and I could be more informed to support their efforts.