Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
We aim to address the shortage of paraprofessionals in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) who have nutrition training and can provide culturally tailored nutrition education to the diverse communities served by WIC. Key to the recruitment and retention of paraprofessionals is the creation of a career and training pathway that is feasible and attractive for diverse employees from communities served by WIC.We will build upon 30 years of partnership with Minnesota and Wisconsin WIC, the Association of State Public Health Nutritionists (ASPHN), Minnesota Extension, and the Minnesota Community Health Worker Alliance (MCHWA) to:1. Conduct a national formative assessment of paraprofessional staffing models and training strategies to identify what efforts are working and for whom they are working, and to develop alternative position titles for paraprofessionals.2. Use human-centered design approaches to co-create with WIC staff training and resources for prospective paraprofessionals, their supervisors, and other WIC staff at local and state agencies.3. Pilot training across local agencies within Minnesota and Wisconsin in diverse locations in which recruitment of Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RDNs) is particularly challenging (isolated rural areas, tribal regions). We will use the RE-AIM implementation science evaluation framework to examine the feasibility and effectiveness of the pilot training, which will provide the evidence based needed to work towards scalability.This cooperative agreement will enable us to build upon established partnerships and expand ongoing "siloed" efforts to create a strategic, scalable paraprofessional training model aligned with the WIC Workforce Development Strategy.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
0%
Applied
0%
Developmental
100%
Goals / Objectives
The primary goal of our project is to co-create a career and training pathway that is feasible and attractive for culturally diverse employees from the communities served by WIC. We identifiedfour objectivesto achieve this goal:Objective 1: Identify current paraprofessional staffing models and training across WIC.Objective 2: Co-create training and supporting resources for paraprofessionals, supervisors, and other WIC staff.Objective 3: Identify the feasibility and effectiveness of the co-created training
Project Methods
We will use human-centered design (HCD) principles to achieve the objectives of this project. Our HCD-based project has three main phases: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Keeping with HCD, we will include end users (potential and current WIC personnel) throughout this project.In the inspriation phase we will convene an advisory committee including the research team, current WIC paraprofessionals, their supervisors, and other local and state WIC staff from Wisconsin and Minnesota, as well as community health workers and leadership from the Minnesota Community Health Worker Alliance. This group will work together to conduct a formative assessment to contextualize and define the workforce problem across different regions. We will utilize relevant data collected by Minnesota Extension as part of their workforce strategy recommendations. We will also conduct a series of semi-structured interviews and focus groups with State WIC directors and current or prior WIC paraprofessionals from across the nation. We will train community health workers and WIC paraprofessionals on our advisory committee to assist in conducting qualiative data collection and analysis.Using template analysis, we will develop two sepearte matrices:one for the paraprofessional staffing models and one for curriculum development. These matrices will outline similarities and differences across states. We will use this information in the Ideation phase to co-design training models and support resources, including recommendations for position titles. The ideation phase consists of brainstorming potential reccommendations for professional pathways and titles, developing "prototypes"for the various models, and then discussing each "prototype." Once a paraprofessional pathway has been descided we will convene a new series of workshops to complete a similar process of ideating, prototyping, and discussion to create training competencies, materials, and supports. Each successive prototype will build from the prior one until the training and materials are finalized.Lastly, in the implementation phase we will conduct a pilot test of the developed training to examine feasilbilty and effectiveness. Each local agency in Wisconsin and Minnesota will have the opporutnity to participate.We will use the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance (RE-AIM) implementation science framework to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of our developed training.Data sources will include process data and "exit" interviews or focus groups with three groups: those who completed training, those who started training but did not complete, and those who were eligible for training but did not participate.In the last six months of the project we will work with our advisory committee, W-ETAC, and other implementation projects to share our learnings and discuss these topics of sustainability and scalability. In these discussions we will also collaboratively determine a dissemination plan for the findings of our project which could be aligned with a kick-off for scaling up the training model.