Week9--Thursday Class

Speaker: Dr. Holben

Today we had our last class in classroom for Community Nutrition. For the first part of the class, Dr. Holben and many our classmates communicated the opinions about the Extension lecture presented by Joyce Brown last Tuseday. We also shared our thoughts about dairy farm tour on this Tuesday.

For the second half of today's class, Dr. Holben showed us lots of useful websites posted on blackboard for us to know community nutrition better. All the links are about our community such as farmer's markets, gardening guides, CFI, ACE, and so forth.

I think this might be the end of the community nutrition class, but just a beginning for me to learn community life and gardening culture in America. There is definitely no such kind of class offered in my country. I think this class really helps me to know how to lead a better life, better nutrition, by our own hands.

We also made our plan for next week's lunch and presentation at the end.

Dairy Farm Tour

Activity: Dairy Farm Tour
Location: Holter Dairy 34425 Dairy Lane Pomeroy, Ohio 45769
Name of Agency: Holter Dairy Farm
Speakers:
Allison--Director of American Dairy Association, worker for "3-A-Day"
The Holters(grandparents, parents, and 2 Hotler sisters)--owners of the dairy farm















Planning, Evaluating. It was a wonderful experience today to know how milk is produced. The Holters introduced us the places where cows grow from babies to milk producers. All animals in the farm are treated nicely. I was very surprised that a cow which was just 2 days old looked so big. I noticed that the place for the youngest group in this farm seems concern the health of cows very much. There was a plate outside the house signed "keeping away from disases". Different age group of cows in this farm are provided different diet. Those milk cows who are 15 to 18 months old are offered two kinds of forage which contain 14% protein and 20% protein, respectively. The farmers value nutrient supplement very much. I observed that the forage for cows is blended by hard corn, millet sprays, and hay. They add more vitamins, calcium, and magnesium for pregnant cows. They provide enough nutritious foods for cows every day, but can hardly measure how much exactly each cow consume. People in this farm have information for every cow in their computer. It is significant to manage the cows by using computer because there are 180 cows need to be feed every day. An interesting thing is that there was a equipment connecting with computer which could know how much weight the cows get when they are eating. Additionally, we visit a liquid manure storage which was built in 1988 by the government.
In the end, I am very pleasure to get a chance to step into the core of the dairy farm--milk house! The milking apparatus, tank for cleaning milk were in front of us! One of the Halter sisters explained the whole process how milk is get from the cows to milk that can be drinked and shipped. At last, we had ice cream, souvenirs provided by the Holter's Farm and "3-A-Day", more important, we had bottled milk made by them.
Roles of RDs: From today's experience, I noticed another important role of dietitians. Allison is a dietitian who works with Mike for the program of "3-A-Day". She plays important roles in the dairy farm such as recommending and directing nutritious forage, formulating nutrients for differenct age groups, and publicizing the idea of "3-A-Day" through marketing of dairy products.

After this tour, the important function of dietitians in food industry draw my attention. Rather than nutrition programs of NGOs or government, food factories are more practical and elementary places for RDs to be helpful.

Thursday-Ohio State University, Extension

Speaker: Joyce Brown, Extension educator
Type of Agency: Federal Program
Mission/Purpose: The chief goal of this program is to improve food seurity of people in community. On the other hand, to strengthen people's lives and communities through research-based educational programming.
Funding Source: Federal, state, and local monies.
Program planning, monitoring, evaluating: Their programs include:

• Family and Consumer Science,
• 4-H,
• Community Development,
• Agriculture and Natural Resources.
  

OSU Extension Community Development educators and specialists enhance communities by working with business communities, current and emerging community leaders, as well as elected and appointed officials. Monitoring and evaluating of the program is conducted through evaluations forms, also known as EEET. Program, program development, teaching materials, and the educator are all evaluated.

Role of RDs: According to the speaker, RDs can play a role at the state level or as a program assistant at the local level. But the speaker said some of their stuff are dietitians but they are not required to be. They generally do not like people with a nutrition background as a program assistant though due to their terminology and their science background.

The speaker today seems dislike dietetians and her emotion was out of control for a while. I was a little upset for the atmosphere of class. However, she did give us some useful message and website sources about this federal program anyway. What really interested me most was that they way they educate adults. She told us they just educate kids and let the kids to educate their parents. This is reversed to the classic teaching mode but really seems more effective. As a foreigner, I have no experience from any program of this federal project, yet I would like to believe "extension"is a good program for kids in the U.S.

Tuesday-Ohio Board of Dietetics

Name of Speaker: Kay Mavko, Executive Director
Name of Agency/Program: Ohio Board of Dietetics
Type of program and Funding: All funding are gathered through fees for members. ($60 unlimited permit, $24 one time permit.)
Purposes and Mission: The mission of the Ohio Board of Dietetics is to effectively protect the public by regulating the practice of dietetics through licensure, and by fairly and consistently enforcing the laws and rules governing nutritional practices.

Objectives of Dietetic Licensure include:

• provide working knowledge of Ohio dietitian licensure law.
• review requirements for licensure including limited permits, initial licenses, and license renewal
• review relevant exemptions
• review OBD enforecement and complaint handling.
  

Role of RDs: RDs act as promotors or resource for a law in consideration, etc.
Program Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation: They do not offer any special programs, but focus on laws and regulations for practicing dietetics or those who practice under "dietitian like" names. For monitoring and evaluation, they look at the feedback of a law/regulation and obverse how the behavior that the law/regulation is focused on has changed.

The lady spoke today has 14 years' work experience on this, she also has variety of practices. She told us how an individual could become dietition legally and provided FAQs about the dietitian licensure law in Ohio. Even though the topic of this class is not a classic nutrition program, I think it is really a good class and very important for all of us. Knowledge from this class could be regarded as a useful resource for us all the time if only we are aim to be a dietition in future.

Week7-Thursday

On thursday, we use the first half of the class time to engage in the yearly scholar presentation of our university in convocation center. We had free pizza as well as beverage and see posters made by students in our school. It is really a good experience to know so many research directions and researchers through a fair.
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For the second half of that class, Marjorie gave us a lecture about Food Pentry in Ohio. They limit healthy food for grant. Monthly donation is about $115 per month. Marjorie mentioned Lisa, a important lady in this program.

Name of speaker: Marjorie Vardell
--Second-year Graduate Student in School of Human and Consumer Sciences of Ohio University

The purpose of this program is to provide food and assistance to those people live in community in southeast Ohio.

Funding Source: 3 churches, and the Sisters of St. Joseph grant

Role of Nutrition Professionals：no RDs in this organization, all people work for this program are volunteers

What impressed me most is that everyone work for this program is not paid. There are 15 to 20 volunteers there. I really hope that one day in future I can be a volunteer in such kind of organization and contribute myself to the society.
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For the garden work, our group decide to transplant our cute veggetables to the garden on Sunday 11 am.

Women, Infants & Children (WIC)

Name of Agency/Program: Women, Infants & Children (WIC)

Speaker: Jody Shriver
Director of Athens and Perry County

Type of Program: Nutrition Education Program

Funding source: Federally funded by USDA, each county applies for a grant annually through the Ohio Department of Health (ODH).

Purpose/Mission: To improve the health status and prevent health problems among Ohio's at-risk women, infants and children.

Role of Nutrition professional: WIC provides nutrition education, breastfeeding education and support; supplemental, highly nutritious foods such as milk, eggs, cheese, juice, cereal, beans, peanut butter and iron-fortified infant formula; referral to prenatal and pediatric health care and other maternal and child health and human service programs (examples: Head Start, Medicaid and Food Stamps). Nutrition professionals is in the charge of providing counseling for individuals and suggestions for community. WIC was set up in 2004 in Athens county. Nutrition professionals in this agency do not diagnose, they just provide nutrition counselling, and nursing service for moms. Dietitians give moms education and tell what they should do. Additionally, nutrition professionals have to make sure handouts are all current and keep updating. So the authorized foods on list are changing all the time. Another fuction of RDs is that they encourage people to choose organic foods. Farmer's market and groceries are used as intermediums to achieve this purpose. WIC often provides coupons for people in community. Take last year for example, 437 books ($15 each book) of coupons were distributed in Kroger.


Tips about Nutrition is provided online by WIC in Ohio and is as following:

• Stock up on a variety of healthy foods. Let your family members choose a snack that sounds good to them from what is offered.
• Eat together as a family. Talk and enjoy each other’s company rather than sitting in front of the television.
• Don’t give up!. It is important to offer your child a new food several times before he/she may choose to like it.
• Talk to your WIC health professional about portion sizes and foods that are right for your child at his/her current stage of life.
• Visit your local WIC clinic for healthy foods and recipe ideas.
  

I think this is a stable and reliable source for people to get nutrition education and support because it is funded by the government. Although the coupons distributed in last year was only about $6,000 in total, it is helpful and meaningful for people in Athens community.

Week6-Thursday

Instructor: Dr. Holben
Activity: lecture-Chapter17. How to develop a nutrition education program.

Today we had a lecture in class about how to develop a nutrition education program. After giving some basic ideas and principles for doing this, Dr. Holben inspired us by taking two examples and help us know how to write a purpose for a program.

I think this lecture is very significant and practical for nutrition students. Because one of major roles of nutritionists or dietitians is improving awareness of nutrition among population. Changing behaviors of targeted population is thought to be the primary task of a program.

After learning this class, we will properly know what to do exactly if we want to promoting the nutrition status of the population, if we want to develop a nutrition education program.

Week 6 Tuesday

On this tuesday, we continued discussing the agency assignment in class. Each student made speeches in the class just summarized every angency/program very briefly. My topic is "Fruit and Veggies-More Matter". It was the unique program that aim to encourage people to eat vegetables and fruits. We finished discussing all agency/program assignments before 1:15pm.

For the second half of the class, Dr. Holben had to attend a meeting thus he left. Jessica, a graduate student majors in family study, came into our classroom and hoped to do a survey. Since my mom is leaving in China, the survey was only for those live in the U.S., I cannot helf her, then I left.

For our garden, Katie and Laura are keeping our plants at their apartments. I am just waiting for the opportunity of transplanting.

Disscussion for Agency assignment

On Thursday, we used the class time to discuss our "Agency assignments". All students made handouts for the agency assigned and had sent them to their classmates before class already. Every one spoke in the class talked about the type of program, purpose, funding source, history, role of nutrition professionals, and evaluation for the URL according to CARS. Dr. Holben explored deeper on the topics after everyone summarized. So we had more comprehensive understanding on each program. Because of limited time, I, just ike some other people in the class, did not gain a opportunity to talk about my agency. However, we will continue next Tuesday.

From this class, I am very glad to know so many food assistance programs in the U.S. It is very impressive that U.S. has so many programs to help their citizens maintain good nutrition status and fight against food insecurity. The programs in the U.S. include those conducted by goverment or by NGOs. Comparing with other China, U.S. has good awareness of and mature for promoting nutrition status already. I think this is very worthy for China to learn. Because in China, government pay more attentions to food safety, less attentions to food insecurity. Food assistanc programs which aim to promote people's nutrition status are rare. Knowledge learned from "Community Nutrition"class is very significant for me to understand the nutrition care system in the U.S. Thank Dr. Holben.