Communities Interested in BHF

A Grant to Reduce Childhood Obesity in Your Community

Building Healthy Families (BHF):

BHF has three research-tested program components:

1. Simple nutrition education sessions to help families eat more healthfully.
2. Fun physical activity promotion for the whole family.
3. Support to help families set goals to follow-through on eating and activity plans.

Education Sessions:

1. 12 weekly face to face family education sessions.
2. 4 education sessions to keep families from falling back into old habits after the 12-week program.
3. A final refresher session between 6 months and 1 year followed by a final follow-up check-in session a year after the families begin the program.

                            

What is special about BHF?

• Designed in Nebraska for small towns and rural communities where services for families are spread across a number of community organizations.
• It works! BHF reduced childhood obesity in participating families in rural Nebraska, as well, or better than programs tested in research studies.
• Packaged as a ’turn-key, electronic box’ with everything a community needs to be trained on the program, work with community partners to engage families, and deliver the program (including program materials).
• Includes a secure evaluation portal for program outcomes that meets clinical privacy standards.
• Designed to be easy to try out and determine the best way to deliver the program in your community.

Our Goal: Our goal is to identify communities that are interested in delivering BHF and provide those communities with the resources necessary for program implementation.

Community Partners
To deliver the program communities will identify an organization that can lead the efforts to recruit families to the program and an organization that will deliver BHF. Communities can identify one organization who can fill both roles or have multiple organizational partners. If there are more than two community organizations, please add to the template below to include those additional organizations.

 

Eligibility Requirements and Community Selection

1. Any community in Nebraska outside of Omaha and Lincoln.
2. Completion of Letter of Intent (LOI) Template (see below).
3. Submission of the LOI Template by November 1, 2019 to Project Coordinator, Ali Malmkar malmkaram@unk.edu
4. The project lead and at least 2 members from each organization listed on the LOI Template must complete a pre-application survey 7 days after submitting the LOI Template. Our team will send a link to this survey once we receive your completed LOI Template.
5. Communities that complete the LOI Template and all necessary pre-application surveys will be asked to complete a 1000-word narrative (approximately 2 pages) on community priorities and plans to implement BHF.

Letter of Intent Template

• What does my community need to offer BHF?
  • A strong interest in helping families with obese children to move more, eat more healthy foods, and get to a healthy body weight.
  • A lead community organization.
  • Community partners who can help find and enroll families that can benefit from BHF and community partners who can deliver the program.
  • Ideally, a community would have at least 2 partner organizations.
  • Partners can be from the local health department, hospital, school, extension office and/or recreation center.
  • A dietitian or individual with a background to teach families about nutrition, a health educator or someone with background in helping people change their behaviors, and someone with experience in physical activity promotion.
  • Submit a letter of intent!
    
    

• Do we have to have 2 organizations to apply?
  • We encourage at least two community organizations to work together to implement BHF, one to focus on recruiting families and one to focus on implementation.
  • An example could be having a school partner that uses the BMI Reporter to send information home to families about their child’s weight. An invitation could be included in those materials to help engage families in BHF. A second partner might be cooperative extension health educators to implement BHF from week to week with families.
  • In your community you might have one organization that could do both. Maybe your school district using the BMI Reporter to help identify and enroll families and has a dietitian, a school counselor, and a physical education teacher who could all realistically participate in delivering BHF. It is just important to think about reaching the families and then implementing the program.
    
    

• What are these pre-application surveys in the Letter of Intent about?
  • The funding for this project comes from the CDC Childhood Obesity Research Demonstration (CORD) 3.0.
  • The Nebraska CORD 3.0 evaluation includes trying to figure out how different communities and organizations can adopt and sustain BHF. The surveys will help us understand the context of each organization.
  • Completing the surveys is required and we make it easy by sending a unique survey link to each person listed in the letter of intent. However, because we don’t want to influence your responses, the answers to the survey questions will not be used as part of the selection process.
  • All information you provide will be confidential. It will not be reported back to your organization or community, except in aggregate.
    
    

• Can the project lead ‘count’ as one of the two pre-application surveys from an organization?
  • Yes, as long as s/he is someone with decision making authority for the organization or will be involved in implementation of the recruitment or program delivery activities.
    
    

• Why do you want at least 2 people from each organization to be involved and complete the pre-application surveys?
  • We want to have a decision-maker and a “doer” from each organization involved so we know that the commitment to recruit families for BHF, and to deliver it, can be acted on. This an administrator in an organization can make decisions on resources that will be used to recruit families or deliver BHF. The Doers, will implement and have a good sense of what is feasible based on their other work responsibilities.
    
    

• How will you help us to engage families so we have enough people for a program?
  • Our team has expertise in developing and using the BMI reporter in a number of schools across Nebraska. Communities in this project will have the opportunity to learn about and use this approach. We have also developed ways that local clinics can help identify families and use a physician referral to get families involved. We will also provide information on this method to all communities who are selected to deliver BHF.
    
    

• What do you mean by ‘small towns’?
  • If your community is not in, or contiguous with, Omaha or Lincoln, it is eligible to submit a letter of intent.
    
    

• Do we need a separate letter of intent for each organization that would be involved?
  • No, you just need to have a letter of intent from the organization that you consider to be the lead. You do need to have pre-application surveys for all organizations that plan to be involved.
    
    

• How many communities will be selected?
  • Up to 8 communities will be selected to implement BHF in their communities as a demonstration project.
    
    

• How much support will communities receive?
  • All successful communities will receive $5700 for program start up and implementation. Up to 4 of the successful applicants will be chosen to also participate in a community learning collaborative to support implementation and development of sustainability action plans for their program. The other communities will receive technical support on the packaged program and materials.
    
    

• How long will our community be involved in the project?
  • Participation for the selected communities will be for 24 months.
    
    

• Are there any plans to help communities sustain the program?
  • All communities will receive feedback and lessons learned during the project related to sustainability and potential payment models will be developed and shared across all participating communities.
    
    

• How do I manage the finances if I get a pilot?
  • Each community will need an organization that will manage the finances for supplies and equipment. We are happy to work with your community on this.
    
    

• Do we need any kind of credential to offer the program?
  • You don’t need to have any specific credentials, but we recommend a dietitian or individual with a background to teach families about nutrition, a health educator or someone with background in helping people change their behaviors, and someone with experience in physical activity promotion.
  • It would be great if these folks had some experience implementing activities with children (parks and recreation, YMCA, youth fitness instructor, etc).
    
    

• What does my community need to do if we are selected to offer BHF?
  • Communities that are selected to implement BHF are encouraged to plan to run 2-3 cohorts over 2 years.
  • Each cohort would be between 8-12 families (minimum of 5, maximum of 12 families).
    
    

• Can we do more than one cohort at a time if we want to?
  • Cohorts can run simultaneously or back-to-back. We recommend trying to run one cohort first to iron out any kinks.
    
    

• Do we have to limit the number of families to 12?
  • It would be best to limit to 12 families. As part of the family-based focus, we recommend all family members attend the program and parents are required to facilitate social support and interaction strategies. So, 12 families in one room could be 30 to 48 people. Even if you have the space for this many people, the BHF hands-on activities would make it very challenging to make sure everyone gets what they need from each session.
    
    

• What are the space needs for BHF?
  • A location that has meeting space for up to 40 individuals and a gym or large enough space for physical activity. BHF has been implemented at a university, community college, local high school, and a local YMCA, for example.
    
    
• Who gets the BHF Program: An interactive training and program materials?
  • The electronic program was built using a train-the trainer model. The electronic program will be available to all selected communities. This means all communities will have access to the effective BHF program and program materials. All selected communities will have assistance from the UNK/UNMC team to help you set up your communities account and learn to navigate the system.
  • There are also printed handbooks that go with the electronic program to help your staff navigate the new program.
• What is in the ‘BHF Program’?
  • The ‘turn-key’ program includes all training materials for you to learn how to deliver the BHF program. These training materials include videos and power points. There are also knowledge checks for all facilitators.
  • The electronic program also includes all the curriculum and family-facing materials (e.g. handouts, power point slides, etc) that you need to actually deliver BHF to families.
  • Lastly, the electronic program will have a data portal in which your facilitators can enter and track program data.
• What is the Learning Collaborative?
  • As part of UNK/UNMC funding, we are testing the cost and impact on implementation of different training approaches. The electronic program contains everything you need to run the BHF program but we also know that some communities might need additional support. We are sorting communities into two groups—one that will use the electronic box and one that will use the electronic box plus participate in the learning collaborative.
• What is required of the communities selected for the Learning Collaborative?
  • The LC requires the lead and supporting organizations send BHF program staff to participate in learning sessions.
  • We expect these to be a ½-day meetings (up to 6 in-person during the project period; up to 3 via zoom or conference call).
  • We will work to schedule the sessions midday so teams can drive in and we will aim to keep travel commitment as equitable as possible for participating communities. The research team will also be traveling for these sessions at times.
  • The LC communities receive additional funding to cover the costs of staff travel and time to attend the Learning sessions.

 

REQUEST FOR COMMUNITY NARRATIVES: A Grant to Reduce Childhood Obesity in Your Community

 
The request of Community Narratives is only for communities that have completed the letter of intent process described above and received an invitation to submit.

Community Narrative: A 1000 word narrative that will be used to select communities to implement BHF. The narrative must address each of the following points.

1. Describe how childhood obesity fits within your community’s current identified needs.
2. Briefly describe how you would plan to recruit families to participate in BHF, including low-income families.
3. Briefly describe who would deliver BHF and the expertise of that person (people) to deliver this type of program (be sure to consider the nutrition, physical activity, and behavior change components of the program).
4. Describe where would you be able to host the program in your community? Identify a potential facility for implementation that has room for physical activities (gym, multi-purpose room, etc).
5. Briefly describe how you could see your community sustaining BHF beyond the life of the demonstration project.
6. Describe your interest in, and willingness to, participating in a collaborative group with other communities trying to figure out how best to deliver BHF in their communities.

 
Evaluation Criteria

1. Demonstrated local priority or need.
2. Ability of community to develop recruitment methods.
3. Ability of community to deliver BHF.
4. Plan for sustainability.
5. Willingness to participate in the learning collaborative.
6. Likelihood of success in recruiting families and implementing BHF with high quality.

 
Informational Webinar: We will offer an informational webinar on November 22, 2019 at 1:30pm. We encourage the lead organization and other partners to attend this information session. Additional details on this will be shared at a later time.
 
Deadline

1. All Community Narratives are due by midnight December 15, 2019, local time. Please submit to Project Coordinator, Ali Malmkar malmkaram@unk.edu
2. Selected communities will be notified by January 15^th, 2020.

 

Printable RFA Instructions