Children Eating Well (CHEW) for Health: Nutrition Education Training Partnership between College of Agriculture and Preventive Medicine

Background: The national obesity epidemic and Tennessee’s high rate of obesity mandated new approaches to training agricultural and health professionals.

Objective: Describe a unique educational collaboration designed to disseminate nutrition education to a broad range of future and current health providers.

Methods. A College of Agriculture, School of Medicine, County and State health programs and a Community Advisory Board collaborated to reach undergraduate nutrition students, pre- and post-doctoral medical trainees, practicing physicians, public health program workers, and a state-wide taskforce. Evaluation included pre-post testing of trainees, utilization of training materials, achievement of Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competencies, and trainee feedback.

Results: Faculty and trainees from all disciplines benefitted from community-engaged input.  Agricultural and medical faculty supervised training for agricultural undergraduates in nutrition. Through these activities, as well as participation in WIC-related research, 12 post-doctoral physician trainees addressed all six ACGME-required competencies. There was modest improvement of pre-doctoral medical student knowledge pertaining to nutrition (80% to 86% (p<0.001)).  Over 4,250 trainee-hours of education have been provided in three years. A nutrition and physical activity toolkit was developed and served for in-person train-the-trainer programs and as a web-based resource. Web-site hits averaged 40.5 unique views per week for the first four months. The tool kit was selected as a success story by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Conclusions: Agricultural, medical, and public health institutions can collaborate to provide cohesive and effective training to a diverse audience of health care providers whose knowledge is key to combatting obesity.