Progress 09/01/24 to 08/31/25

Outputs
Target Audience: The target audience for the report September 1, 2024 through August 31 2025 includes students, families, and educators in the St. Peter's Health rural service area. As a rural healthcare center, we are using nutrition education as an upstream approach to healthcare to help reduce the risk of chronic disease later in life. Helena Public Schools Fourth grade students: During the reporting period we surveyed 571 Helena School District (HSD) fourth graders at the beginning of the school year with pre-tests and 482 completed the post-tests. Before the granting period, our steering committee, the Kids Nutrition Coalition (KNC), identified a food security and nutrition gap through a community and school resource assessment. Thirty percent of all children in grades K-12 already have at least one chronic disease. Recognizing that childhood is a prime period to shape lifelong positive food behaviors through education, exposure, and hands-on experience, St. Peter's Health began supporting a staff position to build a nutrition education program in the service area. Since 2021, the St. Peter's Health Harvest of the Month Coordinator worked with the Helena School District to begin a program. In 2021, St. Peter's Health began offering monthly Harvest of the Month nutrition and agriculture lessons in fourth-grade classrooms and eventually expanded to all fourth-grade classrooms in eleven elementary schools in the Helena School District. This is in partnership with SNAP-Education that offered nutrition education lessons in 1st, 3rd, and 5th grade classrooms in three HSD elementary schools in the 2024-2025 school year. Fourth grade students are also role models to younger elementary students and can encourage students to try Harvest of the Month foods in the school cafeteria. Carroll and High School Students: We had 34 Carroll College students (18 Semester 1, 16 Semester 2) and 38 high school students (from 3 different high schools) help teach the Harvest of the Month nutrition and agriculture lessons in 4th grade classrooms during the reporting period. These students were trained by the Harvest of the Month Coordinator and were given a lesson plan and teaching materials each month. Carroll College and high school students helped expand program capacity and participated in a service-learning opportunity. Students had to understand and practice the lesson plans, become familiar with the foods, and then share this with fourth-grade students. While high school and college students were leading the lessons, they were also a target learning audience as the opportunity provided them with experience in leadership and the importance of nutrition education. They also learned about the locally grown foods they promoted. The high school students were mainly culinary arts students. The Carroll College students were mostly pre-med students, and students expressed an understanding of how important nutrition is in holistic healthcare. East Helena Students: In February 2025 we started offering Harvest of the Month lessons in another community served by St. Peter's Health, East Helena. A total of 40 K-5 students participated in monthly agriculture and nutrition education lessons in an afterschool program. The goal of our program was to expand the program outside of the Helena School District. Reaching more students in schools not only expands the number of students we are providing nutrition and agriculture education to but also helps to build a larger community program supporting increased access to nutritious, fresh, locally grown food. Early Childhood Students: Starting in February 2025 our AmeriCorps member brought Harvest of the Month nutrition and agriculture lessons to Early Childhood Classrooms in Helena and East Helena. This included both Head Start and daycare classrooms and a total of 72 students each month. Nutrition and agriculture education at the early childhood level helps introduce new foods at a young age and the more times they see the foods, the more likely they are to try them. Families and Additional Community Partners: Secondary audiences of our program include the families and community of students participating in lessons. Fourth-grade students brought home recipe books and lesson materials to share with their families. Early childhood families received recipes and pictures via email. We surveyed parents and teachers to determine the impact of the program and heard many enthusiastic responses to trying the local food recipes at home. Providing materials for students to bring home helps involve the whole family in nutrition education and brings lasting, sustainable impacts to eating choices. Sodexo: Recipes used for Harvest of the Month tastings were shared with Sodexo food services. They aligned their menu to offer the same Harvest of the Month recipes on the school lunch menu. For example, in February, we offered beet chips for fourth grade students to try in the classroom. In the same month, Sodexo made the same beet chips and put them on the salad bar in K-12 schools that serve approximately 4000 students per day. The purpose of working in partnership to extend taste test to the lunchroom is to expand the number of students experiencing Harvest of the Month, but it also provides a peer setting for students to try new foods. Fourth grade students can have a leadership role in the lunchroom, and it also gives students another opportunity to try the food. Children might need multiple times to see the food before they try it. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Professional Development: At the beginning of the school year, the HOM Coordinator provided a Harvest of the Month introduction to Carroll College and High School Students. The introduction talk is 30 minutes and gives an overview of the program purpose, expectations of student teachers, a lesson plan review, and an example lesson and taste test. Students then receive the lesson plan to review before teaching in the classroom. In addition, students get experiential learning experience practicing public speaking and explaining general health concepts. In the past year we had a high school student say that because of teaching HOM they were going to consider pursuing a degree in elementary education. In addition, St. Peter's Health supported students who were not ServSafe certified to complete the online Food Handler training course. This course provides food safety training for food preparation and service so that they can maintain food safety while serving food in the classrooms. In addition to applying what they learned to the Harvest of the Month lessons, this information can also be used on a resume if they decide to work in a food service job. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Our results will be available to share starting in August 2025. We will be using these to present to the hospital administration to record impacts of this position and community partnerships. The results will also be shared with the Kids Nutrition Coalition, the steering committee for the HOM program. In addition, we will share with the Helena School District and Carroll College to report the impact this program has on our community and student education. We have also submitted a speaker proposal to the Montana Healthcare Foundation conference with hopes we can reach a wider audience and share our model with other healthcare facilities working to reach a common goal. We would like to share our results but also workshop how to leverage community partnerships to reach a common goal and have a sustainable impact. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Goal #1: Since our grant submission, the federal funding landscape has changed the long-term goals of some of our community partners. Our SNAP-Ed Program has been cut, AmeriCorps is in limbo, Local Food for Schools and Food Pantries has been terminated, and funding for rural hospitals is uncertain. We feel now more than ever that the mission of our program is important, and we need to help fill in the growing gaps in food security and nutrition education. With funding for the next reporting period, we plan to continue our momentum by leveraging service-learning opportunities to expand our program capacity and reach. Carroll College and all high school teachers have committed to the program in the 2025-2026 school year. We will be updating the lesson plans and beginning of year training thanks to feedback from fourth grade teachers. We will also share our model with East Helena Public Schools at the beginning of the school year to potentially expand into the classroom and encourage service-learning opportunities for East Helena High School students. We will continue to work with and support those schools that have already established school gardens and compost systems. Any excess produce can help support HOM Programs at other schools. From a sustainability standpoint, building new compost and garden systems will be up to the individual schools. The HOM Coordinator will continue to help support school staff interested in these projects by offering technical assistance. Goal #2: A major goal we will focus on this next reporting period is also how to make our program sustainable past the granting period. One way to do this is to develop Farm to School professional development opportunities for classroom teachers. The HOM Coordinator has been meeting with the State Education Department (Montana Office of Public Instruction (MTOPI)) to develop training for teachers. Teachers will have the incentive of continuing education credits and also develop a Farm to School educator network across the state. The HOM Coordinator will also be reaching out to neighboring rural school districts in the SPH service area to offer support for developing a Harvest of the Month program in their schools. Goal #3: The HOM Coordinator will continue to work with our External Evaluator to design innovative evaluation strategies for our program. We will work with MSU AHEC to design our evaluation strategy for the 2025-2026 school year. The report and evaluation strategy will also help influence our approach to lessons and what we need to offer more training to our guest teacher volunteers. Goal #4: In the next reporting period, we will look to our community partners to help achieve this goal. It won't happen every month, but with the lack of space and time in Sodexo's kitchen and the loss of Local Food for Schools funding, we will continue working collaboratively to achieve this goal. Our existing partner Helena Food Share has a new commercial kitchen space next to one of our high schools. The HOM Coordinator will work to organize Helena High Culinary Arts students and/or Carroll College Public Health students to prepare a Harvest of the Month tasting for at least one elementary school lunch service during the 2025-2026 school year. The HOM Coordinator will help with ingredient procurement, the students will prepare the food, and then Sodexo will receive and serve the food during lunch service. This lunch tasting will align with the Harvest of the Month classroom tasting. We will also work with fourth grade teachers to recruit fourth grade students to help promote the Harvest of the Month item during the schoolwide tasting. Taste test data will be shared with Sodexo and the story will be shared with the community. Goal #5: We will continue to look for opportunities to bring the fruit and vegetable costumes into the classroom and at community events as well as opportunities to pair medical professionals with reading opportunities for the Harvest of the Month booklist. The HOM Coordinator will reach out to librarians in the Helena School District and neighboring schools to gauge interest in Harvest of the Month and offer training for ways the posters and books can be integrated into their libraries. Goal #6: To expand this program to school lunches and students outside of fourth grade classrooms, we will need community support for a new central kitchen at Helena Public Schools. Without space Sodexo cannot prepare meals from scratch or offer enough cold storage to purchase fresh, whole ingredients for preparation. A new central kitchen will also offer technical education and training for students interested in culinary arts and food preparation. In this reporting period we will focus on collaboration to share our quantitative and qualitative data with the general public in support of this goal. The HOM Coordinator will continue working with high school and college student teachers to recruit student teachers for the program in both Culinary Arts and Public Health. We have also agreed to host another AmeriCorps volunteer with the Montana Dept of Ag to start in January 2026. We have also matched with one MSU Dietetic intern to work with us in April 2026. They will be with us for two weeks to help with data entry and analysis and finishing up Harvest of the Month classes for the 2025-2026 school year.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The Community Coordinated Harvest of the Month (HOM) Program in Rural Southwest Montana aims to establish a sustainable nutrition education program in our schools that supports community agriculture and the nutritional quality of school meals. We can reduce the risk of diet-related chronic diseases by helping to make local, fresh foods the easy choice and using nutrition education programs as an upstream approach to healthcare. The low-hanging fruit, or immediate audience we are working with, are students in elementary schools. Goal #1: increase capacity for student food, garden, and nutrition education Major activities completed:Starting in September 2024, high school and college students in Helena, Montana received HOM program training to teach in fourth-grade classrooms. The HOM Coordinator started teaching afterschool HOM lessons to K-5 students in East Helena in February 2025. We have two school gardens that engage students outside of the classroom one at an elementary school, another at ST. Peter's Health daycare on School District property. Data collected:Our external evaluator Montana State University Office of Rural Health and Area Health Education Center (MSU AHEC) guided an evaluation plan. Carroll College students collected qualitative data by interviewing classroom teachers, high school and college teachers, as well as other Carroll students who had led classroom lessons. A digital survey was sent to classroom teachers at the end of the school year to get program feedback. Summary statistics and discussion of results:Twenty-five total classrooms were paired with an instructor or instructor team to visit their classroom once per month and provide a 30-minute nutrition and agriculture lesson. Seventeen classrooms were led by college and high school students; the St. Peter's Health (SPH) Coordinator led the remaining eight classrooms. Goal #2: Provide training, technical support, and resources to teachers and food service staff on agriculture literacy, nutrition education, and standards. Major activities completed:We shared our program model with East Helena Public Schools. The HOM Coordinator will begin reaching out to neighboring school districts once the 2024-2025 school year report is complete and has been shared with program stakeholders. Data collected: None Summary statistics and discussion of results:We were recognized as a Farm to School resource by the East Helena School District. Goal #3: Advance nutrition knowledge of students in elementary and secondary schools Major activities completed:Starting in October 2025 we surveyed 571 HSD fourth grade students with a pre-test survey at the beginning of the school year. Students completed the same survey at the end of the school year with 482 responses. Data collected:We asked the students the following five questions with the answer options of 'Not at All', 'A Little', or 'A Lot'. I like to try new foods I eat at least 5 different fruits and vegetables each day I know how to tell if my food contains whole grains I know how to grow food in a garden I know where food grows in Montana Summary of statistics and discussion of results:Knowledge of whole grains and how to grow food increased notably. There was a slight improvement in trying new foods and knowing where food is grown in Montana. We saw a slight regression in consistency or confidence in eating 5 fruits and vegetables daily, with fewer students reporting doing it "a lot". Goal #4: Establish an avenue for secondary student integration of nutrition education. Major activities completed:In the 2024-2025 school year, Sodexo participated in the USDA's Local Food for Schools program to support purchasing more Montana-grown foods for the Helena School District menu. The Harvest of the Month Coordinator worked in partnership with Sodexo to align local food meals with the Harvest of the Month program. In February, we made beet chips for students to try in fourth-grade classrooms during the Harvest of the Month lessons. Sodexo also prepared beet chips and served them on the lunch menu. Data collected:Qualitative data Summary statistics and discussion of results:In the classroom, students recognized HOM taste tests from the lunch menu and shared that they were excited to try them again. The biggest success here was aligning our program with efforts with Sodexo. With the loss of Local Foods for Schools funding for the upcoming school year, momentum for growing the local foods available on the school menu is at a standstill. Goal #5: Grow and enhance the farm to school program to impact wider community. Major activities completed:We brought the carrot costume to Harvest of the Month lessons to engage students; they loved it! We also have a Harvest of the Month table set up at the Helena Farmers Market once per month from June 2025 - September 2025. The table engages kids at the market by offering educational activities mostly through art projects. We have also submitted a speaker proposal to share our Harvest of the Month program results at the 2025 Montana Healthcare conference in October. Data collected:Harvest of the Month helped with a Sodexo lunchroom tasting in May 2025. Students at Central Elementary tasted meatballs made with beef and rye berries grown in north central Montana. Over two lunches, 223 students tasted the meatballs, and 151 students voted that they loved them and 21 students voted that they tried them (weren't their favorite). The remaining students did not vote. Summary statistics and discussion of results:Students recognized Harvest of the Month items on the school menu. Students were excited to try bison in the classroom because they had seen it on the lunch menu. Helena Food Share offered Harvest of the Month items in the food pantry. One student visiting the pantry asked if they had ingredients for beet pancakes at the pantry. Students recognized Harvest of the Month at the Farmers' Market. Goal #6: Foster increased community engagement and support the expansion of national service and volunteer opportunities. Major activities completed:In August and September 2025 the Kids Nutrition Coalition will be sharing our HOM stories and impacts with stakeholders to help build momentum and support for a central kitchen. In the 2024-2025 School Year, 100% of Culinary Arts students were engaged in HOM nutrition and agriculture education opportunities. We also had 100% of two Public Health classes at Carroll College participate. In 2025, we were awarded an AmeriCorps Montana Agcorps member for the 2025 service year. In October 2024, our Dietetic Intern entered fourth-grade survey data and set up charts to easily read and compare the data. Data collected:Carroll College students participated in empowerment evaluations to share their experience participating in HOM. Dietetic interns entered and organized the data from pre-post classroom surveys. Summary statistics and discussion of results:Carroll students expressed pride in engaging younger students' curiosity about healthy eating and felt a sense of community responsibility. The experience enriched their education by teaching them to explain complex concepts in an understandable way to children and influencing their career interests, particularly towards dietary aspects of healthcare. One student even saw it as crucial preparation for a future in pharmacy, highlighting the link between healthy diets and overall well-being. As a result of our project, we have a collaborative approach in our hospital service area to work together to increase access to fresh, healthy food. We are also exposing college and high school to the importance of local agriculture and nutrition education. There is an increased awareness of foods grown in Montana, families are trying the Harvest of the Month recipes at home, and our program is being recognized across the state.

Publications