 Coming up on this edition of Partners Video Magazine, FNEP, the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program marks a milestone with a Washington, D.C. celebration featuring a salute from an Olympic superstar. We'll trace the history of this important U.S. Department of Agriculture program and talk to key partners of its parent agency, USDA's Cooperative State Research Education and Extension Service. In Texas, we'll visit with participants and champions of the program. In Florida, we'll see FNEP in action, reaching out through community organizations. We'll see FNEP making a difference for tribal communities in North Dakota. And we'll learn how FNEP takes federal investments and returns crucial and cost-effective benefits. All this and more coming up on Partners. And welcome to Partners, the video magazine that celebrates the work of America's land grant colleges and universities in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and many others around the nation. I'm Chuck Denney from one of Tennessee's land grant institutions, the University of Tennessee, and I'll be your guest host for today's show. Our topic today is FNEP, the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program. FNEP was built upon the idea that all Americans should not only have food on their tables, but also the nutrition guidance to maintain healthy lifestyles. In early 2004, FNEP celebrated its 35th year with a festive event in our nation's capital. FNEP was born here in the halls of Congress and nurtured by lawmakers and leaders at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 35 years later, Capitol Hill was the setting for a gala anniversary celebration. Partners from USDA and nationwide were on hand to talk about FNEP's success in teaching families with limited resources about nutrition. The Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program has always had the fundamental goal of changing behavior in ways that improve first the quality of diets, support healthy lifestyles, enhance the power of individuals to chart their own life course. In a taped message, Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersey spoke from experience about the positive impact of FNEP on families. FNEP, I feel it's a tremendous program and my mom who is no longer here and my family really benefited from FNEP. When I was younger, you know, my mom, my dad and I was talking about you got to eat your broccoli, you got to eat your spinach if you want to be strong, you got to eat your carrots and I did eat those foods. As an athlete, trying to be the best that I could be, nutrition was very important. Even today, not competing anymore, nutrition is very, very important. You know with kids, you have to coach them and in coaching them, explaining to them why vegetables are important, why you need to eat fruit. Having a well-balanced meal, we talk to them about protein, different foods that they need to eat and not just snacking on junk food. To have a program like FNEP for around for 35 years, hopefully it will continue on for a lifetime. It makes a tremendous difference. Two dozen program participants, volunteers, professionals and champions were honored for their work in FNEP. I was here when it got started 35 years ago. It's an investment in the future. Put in $1, get the return of $10. We talk about human relations, we talk about self-esteem and we motivate people to want to achieve higher goals in life and to set high goals. FNEP success stories can be found in all 50 states and six U.S. territories in communities where it continues to make a difference. FNEP works and it works very, very well. This program has helped more than 26 million people with limited resources, makes dramatic improvements in their diets. I just started eating more fruits and vegetables like on a daily basis. Before I didn't really like fruits and vegetables, but now I eat them because I know what the benefits are. Thank you for your time. Through an experiential learning process, adult FNEP participants learn how to make food choices to improve the nutritional quality of the meals they serve their families. They gain new skills in food production, preparation, storage, safety and sanitation and they learn to better manage their food budgets and related resources such as food stamps. Please who have benefited from FNEP, it's hard to imagine a time when this popular program did not exist. But that was the case in the late 1960s. Thanks to an act of Congress, FNEP became reality and the rest, as they say, is history. As the 1960s came to a close, America was reaching for the moon. But there were earthly issues in need of attention. FNEP began as a pilot project in the late 60s as part of the whole effort toward looking at hunger in America and how to address this. The White House conference that looked at hunger in America sent people out into the country and really looked at the rural areas in inner cities. They were amazed at the level of hunger. The food stamp program also started about the same time, so it was really beginning to look at how the federal government could have an impact on trying to solve this problem. In Washington, D.C., FNEP found a home at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a champion on the hill. My hands-on involvement goes way back. I've seen the program and then in the Congress, of course, I supported it, specifically as chairman of the Agriculture Committee, which got jurisdiction over all the food programs. I did it with much love for the program. It was 1973. I was a seventh grader and Congressman de la Garza was there, and I got to give a 05-6-minute speech on nutrition and the importance of the program. Since I saw him at that meeting when he became interested in politics, I said I want him in my office, so not only did he get inspired, but he inspired me also. My grandmother, just before that time, she was hired as a program aid and was put to work in the community, spreading the good word about nutrition, so I think the greatest effect and the greatest benefit of this program is at the grassroots level. FNEP is a multi-level partnership. The Cooperative State Research Education Extension Service is a federal partner, so the funds come to CSR, EES, distribution to the states. It works through the land-grant universities. That gives it the strong research basis to be able to keep up with the latest knowledge about diet and health, as well as food safety and money management, food resource management. Through three and a half decades, the FNEP evolution has continued, and while poor diets remain a focus, new challenges such as chronic disease, physical inactivity, and obesity are among FNEP's priorities for the future. Instead of eating a big portion of meat, we just eat a small one and combine it with vegetables, and I have lost 37 pounds since I began the program. FNEP youth programs provide nutrition education at schools, in after-school care programs through 4-H clubs, camps, community centers, neighborhood groups, and home-gardening workshops. In addition to lessons on nutrition, food preparation, and food safety, youth topics may also include fitness, avoidance of substance abuse, and other health-related topics. One of the strengths of FNEP is that it serves those who need it most. In some areas, program partners and volunteers go out of their way to reach out to members of their community with a helping hand. In our next segment, we travel first to the Colonias of South Texas. Later, we'll see how FNEP is helping families in Florida. Our story begins in the Lone Star State, where the program has a shorter nickname, E-N-P. In Texas, we actually call the program Expanded Nutrition Program, a little bit shorter title, which actually was the title of the program when it first started. The program's core clients are people of modest means in neighborhoods like the Colonias, near the Texas border with Mexico. Women or men on our staff are recruited from the communities where they live to work as assistants or associates in the program, and because they are recruited from those communities, they understand the culture and they speak the language. She's learned how to save money by sharpening the specials, by reading the labels, by using coupons whenever possible. We always feel like we're empowering. We, in the, with the adult phase, we empower ladies, you know, to do better for themselves and their families, and in the youth phase, we empower children to help their parents. I like to see those ladies, the changes, the smiles on their faces when they see me coming, knowing that I'm going to change their lives one day, you know, or soon. So I know I do make a difference in their lives. When I come and I introduce myself, I introduce a program, and I tell them, just try to get me a group of ladies as many as you can, the more the merrier. We come to nutritional classes and learn how to read labels, how to measure how much salt, how much sugar they have, or cholesterol. Some participants finish learning the lessons, then become volunteers leading classes of their own. It's a very, very important, the class, the nutrition, for me and for my family, because my husband, it's a problem in the heart, and my son problems the diabetes. We learn to eat healthy, not to eat too much junk food, eat a lot of vegetables, the grain group, all of those healthy stuff. To run in place, we do breathing exercise, and we do head rolling and shoulders, we move the shoulders. I run around, like when we're playing, I like to run a lot. I have seen tremendous results from the students' thinking skills. Their focus, their concentration is more avid, more clear, and we have the snacks I'm having, vegetables and fruits brought into the classroom, and they follow up at home. In youth and adult classes, the lessons are valuable and long-lasting. In addition to nutritional knowledge, participants learn skills and food safety, and in stretching their food dollar, that will last a lifetime. They go through a series of lessons, and then they are graduates of the program and get a certificate and attend a little graduation event. They really value what they're learning and their certificate. I always tell everybody in my family what I've learned here, but how to eat better vegetables, portions, different portions of all the food groups. Partners from the local community also play a role. You are in the studios for KGBT 98.5, where we started a show that what we do is we talk about the expanded nutrition program, and we talk about how important it is to be able to eat healthy, to live healthy, and to actually be a part of healthy relationships as well. I'm remembering a young woman who was so complimentary of the program staff, and she said, you took a page out of your book of life and added it to our... Florida is known for growing great fruits and vegetables, which comes in handy for FNEP educators. My job here is to help people grow plants of all types and also get better use of their fruits and vegetables, and getting people introduced to using these that maybe haven't even seen them before, and once they get them and they like them, they start to look for them in the area of markets. Consumption of fresh market produce is much, much higher among FNEP participants after the program than before. I'm a stakeholder of the Land Grant University, and I represent University of Florida as a delegate to CARET, which is a national advocacy group representing the Land Grant System. I was asked to investigate the FNEP program and to make a recommendation to CARET concerning whether CARET should support the FNEP program. I wasn't particularly excited about it because I'm not one who believes in handing people fish when they ought to be taught to fish. FNEP teaches people to fish, and it does so in a very, very enthusiastic way. In the class that I attended, participants in the class were very, very enthusiastic. I think they were mirroring the enthusiasm of the woman who was leading the class. She would ask them, for example, why they should eat carrots, and they would say because of vitamin A. Why did they care about vitamin A? Because of their eyes they wanted to see. There was so much back and forth and so much enthusiasm from these people that I knew they were retaining what they were learning. FNEP partners with community groups to spread important knowledge that gives people hope. I just want to say, you know, I'm quite honored to be a part of FNEP. I've been with FNEP now close to maybe a year and a half, and I've learned a lot. You know, when I come to each group, I don't come and feel that I know everything. I come also to learn, and I learn from the group as much as I teach the group, and I'm just honored to be a part of this wonderful program called that world. Oh, John's been excellent. He has a good rapport with the clients here, and they love him. Operation Hope is a people helping people organization. He was teaching, you know, and showing them the ways of eating properly, and it's been a great teacher for him. Community partnerships are really what make the expanded food and nutrition program work. Without that, the work would be very difficult. FNEP has very good outcome data. They start out with a checklist in regard to purchasing food, nutrition practices, and food safety issues. The computer program allows us to record the 24-hour food recall information to see what food the family or the participant has eaten. At the end, we're able to see what improvements have taken place, and many families will say that they could not have raised their children and they could not have managed as well. Were it not for FNEP? FNEP is delivered as a series of 10 or more lessons, often over several months, by paraprofessionals and volunteers, many of whom are indigenous to the target population. The hands-on, learn-by-doing approach allows participants to gain practical skills necessary to make positive behavior changes. Through FNEP, participants learn self-worth, that they have something to offer their families and society. The nation's tribal colleges were given land grant status in 1994, and those schools are also involved in bringing FNEP to their nearby reservations in American Indian communities. In our next segment, we take you to North Dakota. If you visit Indian country during an international powwow, you'll see the colors and traditions of many tribes, and you'll get a feel for how these ancient cultural practices are kept alive. Elsewhere in the community, you'll see modern techniques for keeping people alive. Programs such as FNEP are teaching American Indian families how to improve their health and lifestyles through nutrition. In Bismarck, North Dakota, it's happening through a partnership that includes North Dakota State University and the United Tribes Technical College. We have statistics in North Dakota that says there is a great, great need among our Native American population, and we're glad that FNEP is able to help address some of those needs. We feel as if we need to team, to partner, to collaborate with many other groups to make that happen. So we are partnering with our tribal colleges, with WIC, with Head Start, many of the programs that serve the very people that we're looking to meet. Our FNEP paraprofessional staff person is delivering a nutrition education lesson to members of the class at United Tribes Technical College, and they are learning today about label reading. You see a change in their eating habits, and even just moms wanting to switch kids to lower fat foods, lower fat cheeses, and lower fat milks. Diabetes runs high Native Americans, so talk about low-fat cooking. We have a curriculum called Strong and Body and Spirit, and teaches them how to eat less sugar, use low-fat cooking, exercise, so it covers everything. FNEP also goes outside the classroom at the Tribal College, spreading knowledge through storytelling and a return to the roots of Native people. Our nutrition curriculum here at United Tribes includes cultural relevance. Frequently, we include the stories that are told by Native American people, and one of them that we find very relevant when teaching nutrition is the three sisters. The three sisters being corn, beans, and squash. Some family members are the strength as the stock of the corn provides, and other family members may need to intertwine around that strength and reach out and be supported by the corn stock, as beans would need to do. We want people to understand the connection of family, and how food and health in the past made a great difference, and we're hoping we can get in that direction again. There is research that some of the Native communities have 50% of their enrolled members affected by type 2 diabetes. We are hearing about people being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at age 12, age 19, and this is a real tragedy. The FNEP participants helped to plant the fruit and vegetables. They helped to harvest, to husk corn. We are using a curriculum that we've developed here at United Tribes called Buffalo and the Connection to Native American Wellness. The Buffalo Herds provided everything for the Native people. They provided shelter, they provided clothing, they provided food, and as the Buffalo Herds were eliminated, it did change their lifestyle, change their diet, and so we want to bring back through our nutrition curriculum, respect for that buffalo, and how it can be a low-fat meat that can be included in their diet as well as an inclusion of how fitness is important as the buffalo constantly are moving, and that's what we're hoping our families will do. And with that, we'll be teaching traditional dance to the youth at the elementary school as a fitness component of the afterschool snack curriculum. FNEP messages are most effective when they are delivered to targeted groups by people who share a similar cultural heritage. We find that that's the strongest link for success with our staff members, is for them to be a part of the community that they serve. They know them, the people know them, everybody feels comfortable. Me and my children participated in an FNEP program through WIC. Learned about different ideas to use, like my daughter's lactose intolerant, so she drinks the lactose-free milk and then we learned about other things that she can eat and drink or whatever. I guess a lot of Native people feel kind of uncomfortable talking about their eating habits and what their family eats and out here on the campus, you know, the Native to Native relationship seems to work better. It's just more comfortable. You learn so much about how to eat right and exercise and just doing all the preventative things to prevent the diabetes and the insulin and all of that. The little messages that we share at our daycare at our elementary school and as we work with our young moms and dads can make a difference, can impact the situation with diabetes in the Indian country. We also know the more we can talk about getting back to the dining table, we can impact the outbreaks of obesity and that's the future. So we're hoping for FNEP and United Trucks together. Reversing childhood obesity trends, helping children achieve healthy weights, is a nationwide integrated project and a part of the FNEP program. The cooperative extension system delivers nutrition education programs, promoting healthy eating patterns and leading physically active lifestyles. The basis of these program efforts are the Food Guide Pyramid and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Through our stories today we've heard time and again that FNEP is a cost-effective use of federal funds that makes a difference for millions of Americans. Now some numbers behind that concept from our partners at Virginia Tech. We looked at the health care costs associated with various nutrition related diseases and conditions and then we were able to show that in practicing these behaviors that people learn in FNEP they would be able to either delay the onset of certain nutritionally related diseases or conditions or completely avoid those and so the benefit for the cost-benefit analysis was the health care costs that they either delayed into the future or they avoid them altogether. We found out that for every dollar invested in the program, our initial analysis said that there was $10.64 of benefit, a return for that. The dollar benefit for the benefit was based on the number of homemakers or the number of participants that actually made the behavior changes that the literature shows are related to prevention of disease and in order to get a good cost-benefit ratio you have to have a lot of clients who actually make those changes and so the $1 to $10.64 is really just a measure of the amount of change we were able to get people to make. We actually knew that the behaviors were already taking place and that we were helping the clients regardless of the dollar factor. However it does seem to be very meaningful to legislators who pass the legislation that gives us the funds to have a dollar value attached to the benefit and they certainly have been very pleased and impressed with our results. As with any successful program, the expanded food and nutrition education program is always looking for ideas and feedback. You can share your comments and learn more about FNEP at this web address. That's all the time we have. I'm Chuck Denney from the University of Tennessee. Thanks for watching and we hope you'll join us again for the next edition of Partners Video Magazine. So long. Bond this edition of Partners Video Magazine. FNEP, the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program, marks a milestone with a Washington D.C. celebration featuring a salute from an Olympic superstar. We'll trace the history of this important U.S. Department of Agriculture program and talk to key partners of its parent agency, USDA's Cooperative State Research Education and Extension Service. In Texas we'll visit with participants and champions of the program. In Florida we'll see FNEP in action, reaching out through community organizations. We'll see FNEP making a difference for tribal communities in North Dakota. And we'll learn how FNEP takes federal investments and returns crucial and cost-effective benefits. All this and more coming up on Partners. Welcome to Partners, the video magazine that celebrates the work of America's land grant colleges and universities in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and many others around the nation. I'm Chuck Denney from one of Tennessee's land grant institutions, the University of Tennessee, and I'll be your guest host for today's show. Our topic today is FNEP, the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program. FNEP was built upon the idea that all Americans should not only have food on their tables, but also the nutrition guidance to maintain healthy lifestyles. In early 2004, FNEP celebrated its 35th year with a festive event in our nation's capital. FNEP was born here in the halls of Congress and nurtured by lawmakers and leaders at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 35 years later, Capitol Hill was the setting for a Gala anniversary celebration. Partners from USDA and nationwide were on hand to talk about FNEP's success in teaching families with limited resources about nutrition. The Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program has always had the fundamental goal of changing behavior in ways that improve first the quality of diets, support healthy lifestyles, enhance the power of individuals to chart their own life course. In a taped message, Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner Cursey spoke from experience about the positive impact of FNEP on families. FNEP, I feel it's a tremendous program and my mom who is no longer here and my family really benefited from FNEP. When I was younger, you know, my mom, my dad and I always talked about you got to eat your broccoli, you got to eat your spinach if you want to be strong, you got to eat your carrots and I did eat those foods. As an athlete, trying to be the best that I could be, nutrition was very important. Even today, not competing anymore, nutrition is very, very important. You know, with kids, you have to coach them and in coaching them, explaining to them why vegetables are important, why you need to eat fruit, having a well-balanced meal. We talk to them about protein, different foods that they need to eat and not just snacking on junk food. To have a program like FNEP for around for 35 years, hopefully it will continue on for a lifetime. It makes a tremendous difference. Two dozen program participants, volunteers, professionals and champions were honored for their work in FNEP. I was here when it got started 35 years ago. It's an investment in the future. Put in one dollar, get the return of 10. We talk about human relations, we talk about self-esteem and we motivate people to want to achieve higher goals in life and to set high goals. FNEP success stories can be found in all 50 states and six U.S. territories in communities where it continues to make a difference. FNEP works and it works very very well. This program has helped more than 26 million people with limited resources, makes dramatic improvements in their diets. I just started eating more fruits and vegetables like on a daily basis before I didn't really like fruits and vegetables but now I eat them you know because I know what the benefits are. Thank you for your time. Through an experiential learning process, adult FNEP participants learn how to make food choices to improve the nutritional quality of the meals they serve their families. They gain new skills in food production, preparation, storage, safety and sanitation and they learn to better manage their food budgets and related resources such as food stamps. Many families who have benefited from FNEP, it's hard to imagine a time when this popular program did not exist. But that was the case in the late 1960s. Thanks to an act of Congress, FNEP became reality and the rest as they say is history. As the 1960s came to a close, America was reaching for the moon but there were earthly issues in need of attention. FNEP began as a pilot project in the late 60s as part of the whole effort toward looking at hunger in America and how to address this. The White House conference that looked at hunger in America sent people out into the country and really looked at the rural areas in inner cities. They were amazed at the level of hunger. The food stamp program also started about the same time so it was really beginning to look at how the federal government could have an impact on trying to solve this problem. In Washington D.C., FNEP found a home at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a champion on the hill. My hands-on involvement goes way back. I've seen the program and then in the Congress of course I supported it specifically as chairman of the Agriculture Committee which got jurisdiction over all the food programs. I did it with much love for the program. It was 1973. I was a seventh grader and Congressman de la Garza was there and I got to give a 05-6-minute speech on nutrition and the importance of the program. Since I saw him at that meeting when he became interested in politics I said I want him in my office so not only did he get inspired but he inspired me also. My grandmother just before that time she was hired as a program aide and was put to work in the community spreading the good word about nutrition so I think the greatest effect and the greatest benefit of this program is at the grassroots level. FNEP is a multi-level partnership. The Cooperative State Research Education Extension Service is a federal partner so the funds come to CSR EES distribution to the states. It works through the land grant universities that gives it the strong research basis to be able to keep up with the latest knowledge about diet and health as well as food safety and money management food resource management. Through three and a half decades the FNEP evolution has continued and while poor diets remain a focus new challenges such as chronic disease physical inactivity and obesity are among FNEP's priorities for the future. Instead of eating a big portion of meat we just eat a small one and combine it with vegetables and I have lost 37 pounds since I began the program. FNEP youth programs provide nutrition education at schools in after school care programs through 4-H clubs camps community centers neighborhood groups and home gardening workshops in addition to lessons on nutrition food preparation and food safety youth topics may also include fitness avoidance of substance abuse and other health related topics. The strengths of FNEP is that it serves those who need it most. In some areas program partners and volunteers go out of their way to reach out to members of their community with a helping hand. In our next segment we travel first to the colonias of south Texas. Later we'll see how FNEP is helping families in Florida. Our story begins in the Lone Star State where the program has a shorter nickname ENP. In Texas we actually call the program expanded nutrition program a little bit shorter title which actually was the the title of the program when it first started. The program's core clients are people of modest means in neighborhoods like the colonias near the Texas border with Mexico. Women or men on our staff are recruited from the communities where they live to work as assistants or associates in the program and because they are recruited from those communities they understand the culture and they speak the language. She's learned how to save money by sharpening the specials by reading the labels by using coupons whenever possible. We always feel like we're empowering. We in the with the adult phase we empower ladies you know to do better for themselves and their families and in the youth phase we empower children to help their parents. I like to see those ladies the changes the smiles on the faces when they see me coming knowing that I'm going to change their lives one day you know or soon so I know I do make a difference in their lives. When I come and I introduce myself I introduce a program and I tell them just try to get me group of ladies as many as you can the more the merrier. We come to nutrition of classes and learn how to read labels how to measure how much salt how much sugar they have or cholesterol. Some participants finish learning the lessons then become volunteers leading classes of their own. It's a very very important that class the nutrition for me and for my family because my husband it's problems in the heart and my son problems the diabetes. We learn to eat healthy not to not to eat too much junk food eat a lot of vegetables the grain group all of those healthy stuff we do running plays we do breathing exercise and we do head rolling and shoulders we move the shoulders. I run around like when we're playing I like to run a lot. I have seen tremendous results from the students thinking skills their focus their concentration is more avid more clear and we have the snacks I'm having vegetables and fruits brought into the classroom and they follow up at home. In youth and adult classes the lessons are valuable and long lasting in addition to nutritional knowledge participants learn skills and food safety and in stretching their food dollar that will last a lifetime. They go through a series of lessons and then they are graduates of the program and get a certificate and attend a little graduation event. I really value what they're learning and their certificate. I always tell everybody in my family what I've learned here but how to eat better you know vegetables portions different portions of all the food groups. Partners from the local community also play a role. You are in the studios for KGBT 98.5 where we started a show that what we do is we talk about the expanded nutrition program and we talk about how important it is to be able to eat healthy to live healthy and to actually be a part of healthy relationships as well. I'm remembering a young woman who was so complimentary of the program staff and she said you took a page out of your book of life and added it to ours. Florida is known for growing great fruits and vegetables which comes in handy for FNEP educators. My job here is to help people grow plants of all types and also get better use of their fruits and vegetables and getting people introduced to use in these that maybe haven't even seen them before and once they get them and they like them they start to look for them in area markets. Consumption of fresh market produce is much much higher among FNEP participants after the program than before. I'm a stakeholder of the land grant university and I represent University of Florida as a delegate to CARET which is a national advocacy group representing the land grant system. I was asked to investigate the FNEP program and to make a recommendation to CARET concerning whether CARET should support the FNEP program. I wasn't particularly excited about it because I'm not one who believes in handing people fish when they ought to be taught to fish. FNEP teaches people to fish and it does so in a very very enthusiastic way. In the class that I attended, participants in the class were very very enthusiastic. I think they were mirroring the enthusiasm of the woman who was leading the class. She would ask them for example why they should eat carrots and they would say because of vitamin A. Why did they care about vitamin A because of their eyes they wanted to see. There was so much back and forth and so much enthusiasm from these people that I knew they were retaining what they were learning. FNEP partners with community groups to spread important knowledge that gives people hope. I just want to say you know I'm quite honored to be a part of FNEP. I've been with FNEP now close to maybe a year and a half and I've learned a lot. You know when I come to each group I don't come and feel that I know everything. I come also to learn and I learn from the group as much as I teach the group and I'm just honored to be a part of this wonderful program called FNEP. Oh John's been excellent. He has a good rapport with the clients here and they love him. Operation Hope is a people helping people organization. He was teaching you know and showing them the ways of eating properly and you know he's been a great teacher for us. Community partnerships are really what make the expanded food and nutrition program work. Without that the work would be very difficult. FNEP has very good outcome data. They start out with a checklist in regard to purchasing food nutrition practices and food safety issues. The computer program allows us to record the 24 hour food recall information to see what food the family or the participant has eaten. At the end we're able to see what improvements have taking place and many families will say that they could not have raised their children and they could not have managed as well. Were it not for FNEP? FNEP is delivered as a series of 10 or more lessons often over several months by paraprofessionals and volunteers many of whom are indigenous to the target population. The hands-on learn by doing approach allows participants to gain practical skills necessary to make positive behavior changes. Through FNEP participants learn self-worth that they have something to offer their families and society. The tribal colleges were given land grant status in 1994 and those schools are also involved in bringing FNEP to their nearby reservations and American Indian communities. In our next segment we take you to North Dakota. If you visit Indian country during an international powwow you'll see the colors and traditions of many tribes and you'll get a feel for how these ancient cultural practices are kept alive. Elsewhere in the community you'll see modern techniques for keeping people alive. Programs such as FNEP are teaching American Indian families how to improve their health and lifestyles through nutrition. In Bismarck, North Dakota it's happening through a partnership that includes North Dakota State University and the United Tribes Technical College. We have statistics in North Dakota that says there is a great great need among our Native American population and we're glad that FNEP is able to help address some of those needs. We feel as if we need to team to partner to collaborate with many other groups to make that happen. So we are partnering with our tribal colleges with WIC with Head Start many of the programs that serve the very people that we're looking to meet. Our FNEP paraprofessional staff person is delivering a nutrition education lesson to members of the class at United Tribes Technical College and they are learning today about label reading. You see a change in their eating habits and even just moms wanting to switch kids to lower fat foods lower fat cheeses and lower fat melts diabetes runs high Native Americans so talk about low fat cooking we have a curriculum called strong and body and spirit and teaches them how to eat less sugar use low fat cooking exercise so it covers everything. FNEP also goes outside the classroom at the tribal college spreading knowledge through storytelling and a return to the roots of Native people. Our nutrition curriculum here at United Tribes includes cultural relevance frequently we include the stories that are told by Native American people and one of them that we find very relevant when teaching nutrition is the three sisters the three sisters being corn beans and squash some family members are the strength as the stock of the corn provides and other family members may need to intertwine around that strength and reach out and be supported by the corn stock as beans would need to do. We want people to understand the connection of family and how food and health in the past made a great difference and we're hoping we can get in that direction again. There is a research that some of the Native communities have 50% of their enrolled members affected by type 2 diabetes. We are hearing about people being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at age 12 age 19 and this is a real tragedy the FNEP participants helped to plant the fruit and vegetables they helped to harvest to hust corn. We are using a curriculum that we've developed here at United Tribes called buffalo and the connection to Native American wellness. The buffalo herds provided everything for the Native people they provided shelter they provided clothing they provided food and as the buffalo herds were eliminated it did change their lifestyle change their diet and so we want to bring back through our nutrition curriculums respect for that buffalo and how it can be a low-fat meat that can be included in their diet as well as an inclusion of how fitness is important as the buffalo constantly are moving and that's what we're hoping our families will do and with that we'll be teaching traditional dance to the youth at the elementary school as a fitness component of the after school snack curriculum. FNEP messages are most effective when they are delivered to targeted groups by people who share a similar cultural heritage. We find that that's the strongest link for success with our our staff members is for them to be a part of the community that they serve. They know them the people know them everybody feels comfortable. Me and my children participated in an FNEP program through WIC um learned about different ideas to use like my daughter's lactose intolerant so she drinks the lactose-free milk and then we learned about other things that she can eat and drink or whatever. I guess a lot of Native people feel kind of uncomfortable talking about their eating habits and what their family eats and out here on the campus you know the native to native relationship seems to work better it's just more comfortable. You learn so much about how to eat right and exercise and just doing all the preventative things to prevent the diabetes and the insulin and all of that. The little messages that we share at our daycare at our elementary school and as we work with our young moms and dads can make a difference can impact the situation with diabetes in Indian country. We also know the more we can talk about getting back to the dining table we can impact the outbreaks of obesity and that's the future so we're hoping for FNEP and United Trucks together. Reversing childhood obesity trends helping children achieve healthy weights is a nationwide integrated project and a part of the FNEP program the cooperative extension system delivers nutrition education programs promoting healthy eating patterns and leading physically active lifestyles the bases of these program efforts are the food guide pyramid and the dietary guidelines for Americans. For our stories today we've heard time and again that FNEP is a cost-effective use of federal funds that makes a difference for millions of Americans. Now some numbers behind that concept from our partners at Virginia Tech. We looked at the health care costs associated with various nutrition related diseases and conditions and then we were able to show that in practicing these behaviors that people are in an FNEP they would be able to either delay the onset of certain nutritionally related diseases or conditions or completely avoid those and so the benefit for the cost-benefit analysis was the health care costs that they either delayed into the future or they avoid them altogether. We found out that for every dollar invested in the program our initial analysis said that there was ten dollars and sixty four cents of benefit a return for that. The dollar benefit for the benefit was based on the number of homemakers or the number of participants that actually made the behavior changes that the literature shows are related to prevention of disease and in order to get a good cost benefit ratio you have to have a lot of clients who actually make those changes and so the one dollar to ten dollars and sixty four cents is really just a measure of the amount of change we were able to get people to make. We actually knew that the behaviors were already taking place and that we were helping the clients regardless of the dollar factor however it does seem to be very meaningful to legislators who pass the legislation that gives us the funds to have a dollar value attached to the benefit and they certainly have been very pleased and impressed with our results. As with any successful program the expanded food and nutrition education program is always looking for ideas and feedback. You can share your comments and learn more about FNEP at this web address. That's all the time we have. I'm Chuck Denney from the University of Tennessee. Thanks for watching and we hope you'll join us again for the next edition of Partners Video Magazine. So long.