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Impact Report

For plan KA 703. Nutrition Education and Behavior (Quay County)
Date October 27, 2011, 8:24 pm
For Objective Medium-term Show medium-term objectives
Impact Report Established the Quay County Food Protection Alliance in April. The group identified several groups in the county that would be vulnerable to a food outbreak and would be hard to contact. Several options were discussed and the group divided up research jobs to gain information on developing a way to communicate with people who do not get the radio or newspaper. The group also identified others who should be involved. The second meeting occurred in September and 5 new members joined. The group will be working the city’s new emergency notification system which will e-mail, text, and call people when there is an emergency. The next step will be to develop protocol procedures, so that the committee is ready and knows what to do if there is an emergency. Earth Day activities for the Quay County Schools are coordinated by NRCS and revolve around an outdoor classroom that has kivas for presentations, a variety of trees, someday a small pond if we have irrigation water or rain, and hopefully some wildlife. All schools in Quay County participate along with Ft Sumner. The presentations typically focus on Nature or wildlife. The kids rotate by classes through 10 stations. At each station they have a 15 minute presentation. The presenters present 20 times during the day. Typically the 4-H agent takes some animals to the classroom and discusses animal safety. This year the 4-H Agent and Home Economist teamed up to present a totally different program. The program was a skit where the 4-H agent served as a talk show host who could not concentrate on his interview because his grandmother was very sick and he did not know what had caused it. The Home Economist was the interviewee who was going to talk about Food Science, but instead ends up interviewing the talk show host about events leading up to grandma getting sick and describing how bacteria grows on food. The skit was not scripted, but it always ended with the determination that grandma had food poisoning. The kids were brought into the skit as much as possible based on their age. During the presentation the kids learned about the proper ways to thaw meat, washing hands before and after handling food, not leaving food out for more than two hours, and making sure hamburger is cooked well done. Six Hundred and Eighty-two students, parents, and teachers stopped at this station and many reported that they enjoyed the food safety presentation the best. The next week while the 4-H agent was at Tucumcari Schools giving a presentation on a different topic, several asked him how his grandmother was. Also during the presentation, many of the kindergarteners and 1st graders informed us that Miss Alice (Our ICAN educator) taught them to wash their hands while singing a song. Seventy-two people attended our annual Agriculture and Home Economics Seminar. The format was changed this year to a program that focused on food safety of our food supply. The key note speaker discussed how fast a food borne illness can travel through the food supply. Other speakers talked about protecting ourselves against food borne illnesses and other health scares and the new farm bill and how that will affect the food we buy. On the agriculture side the speakers talked about good farming and ranching practices to insure a safe food supply. During the visits to the Extension Clubs in February, discussed with Twenty-nine people suggestions for keeping food safe during an emergency. All types of issues were discussed from freezer safety to food damaged by heat from a fire. What to do when out of electricity and of course rotating food in an emergency kit. Food and refrigerator thermometers were distributed with information on cooking temperatures and food safety. Presented a program to the Tucumcari High School Health Classes on Food Safety. The Plan had been to use the Dr. Quest videos with a discussion, but the schools internet was not strong enough and the videos would not stream properly. So the improvised program became a discussion of what food borne illnesses they had heard about in the media and what were the real causes and then a discussion of home food safety around the 4 areas of clean, separate, cook and chill. A real attention grabber was the meat samples provided by agro-guard. Participants learned at least one thing in each of the 4 areas to keep them safe from food borne illnesses. There were 64 youth in 4 classes. Thirteen youth attended 4-H Home Economics Fun Night during which one of the activities before cooking was a presentation on Food Safety in the Kitchen. Thirteen attended and participated in a discussion and activity sheets from the FightBac program. They learned about the temperature zone, cooking foods until done, and about the 4 principals of Fightbac: clean, separate, cook, and chill.