Sarasota YMCA: HIPPY Families Focus on Nutrition and Staying Healthy

Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters, or HIPPY, is a parent-based literacy program for low-income parents of preschoolers.  InSarasota, HIPPY families, considered to be the poorest of the poor, face barriers of poverty, as well as struggles associated with lower literacy rates, lower educational attainment levels and higher incidences of substance abuse and crime.

Many low-literate adults can get lost in the healthcare system, lose their benefits and endanger their lives and the lives of their children. HIPPY attempts to engage families, increasing their health literacy by giving them the ability to obtain, process and understand health information and by guiding them in choosing a healthy lifestyle, knowing how to seek medical care and taking advantage of preventive measures.

HIPPY uses a curriculum with a Health Literacy component, which includes standard topics such as finding a doctor, healthy, eating, visiting the doctor, nutrition and fitness; however, staff enhances the promotion of better health by offering additional support.  Staff provides parents with one-on-one time to discuss issues, referral for services and provide simple tips on staying fit and healthy eating.

In helping improve people’s access to health information and their capacity to use it effectively, staff has learned many valuable lessons; it takes simplicity and consistency to help families achieve success.  The following “Healthy Snacking Tips” article from our “Family Times” newsletter is one such tool.

It often seems that the biggest challenge to healthy eating comes not from large meals, but instead from the seemingly small choices we make at snack time.  It is important to remember that while snacks are small, each little choice quickly adds up in your daily nutrition.

Here are some simple tips to help you make better snacking choices. Bon Appetit!

1. Choose snacks that will satisfy your hunger such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds and low-fat dairy products.
2. Make snacking on vegetables more interesting by dipping them in non-fat salad dressings or hummus
3. Be creative. Spend a little extra time in the kitchen at the beginning of the week and experiment with different recipes for healthy snacks. There are numerous books and websites specifically dedicated to healthy snack recipes.
4. Don’t be misled by labels. Foods labeled as low or fat free can still have a high amount of calories. In addition, foods labeled as cholesterol free can still have a significant amount of fat, saturated fat and sugar. Always read the nutrition labels on the back of the product.

Healthy snack options include:

• A sliced apple with a tablespoon of peanut butter

• Baby carrots with some hummus

• A small bowl of high fiber cereal with fat free milk

• Homemade trail mix – a mixture of 2 tablespoons each of almonds, cashews, dried cranberries and raisins

HIPPY is dedicated to promoting better health through a mix of home visitation, parenting group meetings, special projects and service referrals and by consistently reinforcing skills, which can lead to increased health literacy.

Staying Healthy tips: Nutrition

New Year’s resolutions often include a resolve to get healthier, by moving more or eating better.  Staying Healthy is a great health literacy tool to teach about good nutrition.  According to Florida’s adult ESOL learners, learning about healthy eating habits is the most important tool gained from the Staying Healthy section of adult literacy courses.

Staying Healthy’s chapter on nutrition explains about important nutrients, how to decipher a nutrition label, what to eat, what not to eat, and how to determine a healthy weight using the BMI scale.  When teaching about nutrition, there are a few simple tips that make nutrition easy to understand:

1.  Aim for more fruits and vegetables (5 to 9 per day), more fiber (20 grams per day), and less sodium (less than 1,200 milligrams per day).  Try to incorporate whole-grains.  Switch to fat-free or low-fat milk and dairy products instead of their full-fat counterparts.

2.  Balance calories by enjoying your food, but eating less.  Avoid oversize portions.  The plate rule, promoted by the FDA and Michelle Obama, is an easy way to do this at meal time.  Half of the plate should be fruits and vegetables, one quarter o the plate should be whole grains, and one quarter of the plate should be protein.  See Figure 1.

Figure 1.  Plate Rule.  Source:  Choosemyplate.gov.

3.  Try frozen or canned fruits and vegetables if fresh produce is too expensive – just try to avoid added ingredients like sodium, sugar, butter, or sauces.

4.  Drink 8-10 eight-ounce glasses of water a day.  Avoid sugary drinks.

Combined with moving more, these simple steps will put you on the right track toward staying healthy in the new year!

Panel Will Showcase Health Literacy Grant Recipients

During the conference, make sure you check out an exciting panel discussion from three strong health literacy grant recipients in the session titled: Promising Program Practices in Health Literacy.

As many of you may be aware, the Florida Literacy Coalition and Blue Cross and Blue Shield  of Florida initiated a health literacy grant program in 2009 for ESOL/family literacy organizations. Ten organizations were awarded the health literacy grant in 2009, and we are happy to report that 16 organizations received a grant for the 2010-2011 program year.

The panel discussion at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, May 6, will specifically showcase three organizations:

1. South Florida Community College
2. Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County
3. Manatee Technical Institute

Program managers from each organization will present their efforts and achievements of their extremely successful grant year.  Don’t miss it!