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PORTLAND, Maine

Kira Rodriguez presents at annual meeting of the Society for Nutrition, Education and Behavior

Kira Rodriguez, M.H.S., research associate for the School of Community and Population Health, presented an oral abstract entitled “An Innovative Decentralized Statewide Approach to Deliver PSEs through SNAP-Ed in Maine” to the annual meeting of the Society for Nutrition, Education and Behavior on July 26, 2015.  She presented as part of a panel on how policy, systems and environmental (PSE) change strategies can be used to augment traditional direct education. 

Her talk focused on Maine’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – Education (SNAP-Ed) and its model of nutrition education delivery that places nutrition educators in local Healthy Maine Partnerships throughout the State.  In addition to providing nutrition education at schools, child care centers, senior citizen homes and other community based locations, Maine’s SNAP-Ed educators are also working to improve school wellness policies, encourage school and community gardens, and other strategies to make the healthy choice the easy choice in the places we live, learn, play and work. 

Rodriguez is part of the Maine SNAP-Ed evaluation team. She also discussed plans for evaluating Maine’s SNAP-Ed PSE work, including a tool developed to track the PSE work, plans for measuring reach of PSE efforts and two case studies on current SNAP-Ed PSE projects underway in Somerset County and Bangor.  Michele Polascek, Ph.D., Pamela Bruno, M.P.H. and Joan Ingram, M.P.H. were co-authors of the presentation.

About the University of New England

The University of New England is Maine’s largest independent university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of flexible, accredited online degrees. In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. The state’s top provider of health professionals, we are home to Maine’s only medical college, Maine’s only dental college, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care degree programs, as well as nationally recognized programs for marine science degrees, natural and social sciences degrees, arts and humanities degrees, and business degrees.