Partnering for Prevention: Building Healthy Habits in Underserved Communities

Cooking Matters for Parents focuses on teaching parents of young children important lessons about self-sufficiency in the kitchen. Participants have the opportunity to practice fundamental lessons including knife skills, reading ingredient labels, cutting up a whole chicken, and making a healthy meal for a family of four on a budget of ten dollars. Each session includes meal preparation, didactic teaching, and sharing the meal as a group. Instructors share their education and experience and discuss how to choose healthy, affordable fruits and vegetables at the grocery store. Each week, adults take home a bag of groceries after each class so they can practice the recipes taught that day.

Parents are trained to deliver each intervention component during mealtimes using a step-wise, behavioral activation approach. The parent-training prong of the Mealtime PREP intervention incorporates four active ingredients of behavioral activation (1. skills training; 2. goal-setting; 3. activity scheduling; and 4. activity monitoring) to help parents build a family meal routine that is enriched with techniques to promote child food acceptance. Each week, parents will take home healthy groceries to practice making healthy snacks and side dishes in the home.