"Wellness" seminars have interesting spin-offs in the Southeast

Food and Nutrition, July, 1986 by Catherine Rogers, Kent Taylor

"Wellness' Seminars Have Interesting Spin-Offs in The Southeast

"Wellness Targeted: A Challenge to Communicate' was the title of a conference jointly sponsored last fall by the Food and Nutrition Service's Southeast regional office (SERO) and the Society for Nutrition Education (SNE).

This innovative seminar was the first SNE had ever co-hosted with a federal agency, and public/private cooperation in health and nutrition education was a theme throughout. The seminar has resulted in some interesting spin-offs, including a number of similar conferences and training programs for state and local school food service staff.

Original seminar held in Atlanta

The FNS-SNE conference, held in Atlanta in October 1985, brought together more than 200 people working in the fields of nutrition and health, education, public service, and private industry. Workshops were designed to address special areas of concern, such as the nutrition needs of mothers and infants, children, and the elderly.

Speakers included a number of well-known nutrition and health experts. Among them were health futurist Rick Carlson, Cable News Network's nutrition director Carolyn O'Neil, Faye Wong from the Center for Disease Control, and Kathy Kolasa, head of East Carolina University's Department of Food, Nutrition, and Institution Management. Former Good Housekeeping Institute director Kristen McNutt, who is presently vice president of consumer and scientific affairs for Kraft, Inc., spoke on "marketing' nutrition.

The role of nutrition in health improvement efforts--such as weight management, exercise, and control of hypertension, for example--was a central focus of the seminar.

"There is no question that the role of nutrition in health care will increase in the future,' Rick Carslon told conferees. "It is essential that nutritionists clarify and simplify their message. That may be difficult since people do not understand nutritional issues as easily as they understand the need for fitness or car safety.'

Included in the meeting were an aerobics session and a tour of "Health Works,' the Coca-Cola Company's state-of-the-art 28,000-square-foot health facility and health promotion program. Participants left the meeting enthusiastic about setting up training for co-workers and others.

Sparked similar effort in Tennessee

Nancy Carter, who is this year's chairperson for the Tennessee School Food Service Supervisors' Study Council, decided to organize a similar seminar in her state. "The Atlanta conference was great,' Carter says, "and I wanted to do something similar for our supervisors.'

Carter worked with the state child nutrition program office to coordinate speakers and topics, and Tennessee nutrition coordinator Helen Minns served as liaison between the state office and the study council. In March, more than 100 school food service supervisors from throughout Tennessee met in Nashville for the 2-day "wellness' seminar.

"The focus of the conference was nutrition education,' says Minns. "With Tennessee set to spotlight school health as the focus for the governor's Healthy Children Initiative in school year 1986-1987, the time was ripe for this effort.' The American Dietetic Association provided the meeting's theme with its 1986 slogan for National Nutrition Month--"Good Nutrition--Feel the Difference!'

Topics ranged from the implications of the national dietary guidelines to establishing personal nutrition goals and marketing nutrition messages.

"We also shared information from other school projects such as PIP--the Positive Image Program--for students needing help with relationships, weight loss, stress-reduction, and related factors,' Minns says. The supervisors planned to incorporate many ideas into their local employee training.

"We're trying to help school food supervisors think about what they and their employees can do to improve their own health, and we're trying to focus on the dietary guidelines by providing the right materials to work with. If the workers see the need for changes in their own dietary health, they're more likely to incorporate these changes and improvements in school food programs.'

Students and staff want information

Information on nutrition and health is very popular now, says Minns. "The students and workers not only need it, they want it. The trick is fitting nutrition education into already crowded curricula and competing for classroom time.

"The link between school food service and nutrition is even more important today,' she adds. "Students need to learn nutrition in the schools. Because of our busy lifestyles, families eat together less often and parents don't always have time to teach children good food choices.'

The Nashville meeting included a group luncheon and breakfast with food choices modeled after the national dietary guidelines. There was also an aerobics stretch break, a display of currently available nutrition education manuals, and an optional tour of the meeting hotel's health club.

Kathy Kolasa and Kristen McNutt, who had been featured at the Atlanta conference, also presented programs in Nashville. "We were fortunate to get these nationally known nutrition educators, both of whom are former national presidents of SNE,' Minns says.