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Supporting a Culture of Health: Empowering the Youth of Casey County · Talking FACS

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  Welcome to Talking Facts and thank you for tuning in to Kentucky Smiles on Talking Facts,
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  a podcast collaboration between the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry and the UK College of Agriculture,
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  Food and Environment Cooperative Extension Service.
• 0:16
  Kentucky Smiles offers listeners information on maintaining oral health advancements in dental treatments,
• 0:22
  research and more.
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  Hello and welcome to Kentucky Smiles on Talking Facts.
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  This is your host,
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  Doctor Jennifer Hunter,
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  Assistant Director for Family Consumer Sciences Extension at the University of Kentucky.
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  Today I am pleased to be joined by Doctor Angela Grubbs,
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  a nurse practitioner and assistant professor with a joint appointment in the University of Kentucky College of Nursing and the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry.
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  Welcome,
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  Doctor Grubbs.
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  Thank you.
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  Thank you so much for having me today.
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  You're going to tell us about a specific project that you've been working on um called supporting of Cultural health Empowering the Youth of Casey County Kentucky.
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  And can you just start today and tell us a little bit about your project?
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  Yes,
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  this project is an interdisciplinary project.
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  Um,
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  a team from UK Health Care.
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  There is a dentist,
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  Doctor Craig Miller,
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  a clinical psychologist,
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  doctor Charlie Carlson,
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  a registered dietician Julie Placencia,
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  and another nurse practitioner,
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  Doctor Audrey Darville.
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  And we are a team of clinicians who are supporting empowering Children,
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  the youth of Casey County.
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  And with this grant um supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
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  we have been able to do several things in the elementary school,
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  a few um programs and things that I will tell you all about today.
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  So,
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  um let's talk a little bit about Casey County specifically because obviously,
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  y'all identified that as a,
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  as a target county for this particular work.
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  What type of health concerns were you looking to address in Casey County we did.
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  So Casey County um is a region of high tobacco use,
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  um access to unhealthy foods and um a large portion with sedentary lifestyles.
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  So we focused on Casey County in hopes that our program and things that we have implemented in Casey County will be able to be sustainable and scalable to other regions.
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  Also in Kentucky,
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  as we know,
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  Kentucky is number one in childhood obesity.
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  Um and that is not something that we want to continue to be number one in.
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  So we wanted to focus on providing health education hopefully before these habits begin.
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  And so we're focused on third graders specifically in Casey County in order to hopefully implement healthy habits and empower them by learning about health education at an early age.
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  So my next question was going to be what prompted you to to select a youth audience that you've,
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  um,
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  you've just shared that with us in terms of wanting to instill these habits early and maybe stop behaviors as opposed to changing behaviors later on or prevent behaviors.
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  Yes.
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  So third graders,
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  um,
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  is when we did research on health education and when it's provided to Children,
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  most health education begins in middle school.
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  And so we decided to target a younger age in hopes that we would be able to implement these healthy habits.
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  Earlier.
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  We also know that third graders are very curious about their world and interested in learning things about themselves and others.
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  They're at a time in their life where they can learn these healthy habits and put them to good use.
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  So um I know several people that you,
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  that you listed on your team and the expertise that they bring um that they bring to this group in addition to that knowledge.
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  Um What else has helped inform the creation of tools or educational um pieces that you're using as part of this work?
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  So we have had a huge support in Casey County.
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  Um Community involvement has been wonderful.
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  The administration and faculty and staff at the local elementary school that we're working with.
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  Also.
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  Um we called the 4h agent,
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  our community champion Megan Clay.
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  She has been a huge help.
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  We also involved our university and clinical community to um help us to create a strategy to develop and deliver health education in a novel and rapid way.
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  And I'm gonna talk about the cards that we developed,
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  right?
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  So one of the tools that you shared that you had developed was this set of um health lesson cards.
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  Can you tell us about those and how they're used?
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  Yes.
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  So we developed a um set of health lesson cards.
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  They're called the Brief health lesson cards.
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  And these cards brief is an acronym.
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  So B stands for brief,
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  um as in we want these to be delivered in less than five minutes are regular and routinely used integrated into other instructions,
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  activity,
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  energetic and um active movement and fun.
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  And these brief health lesson cards are a set of 40 cards that um have brief health messages and an activity for Children to practice these healthy behaviors.
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  There are several different topics including um injury and illness,
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  prevention,
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  nutrition,
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  safety,
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  oral health,
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  tobacco,
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  um prevention and mental health.
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  And so the idea behind these cards is that they are used um by an adult,
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  by a teacher,
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  by a mentor and that these health messages can be delivered in a short um time during the school day or at a ball practice or um anywhere where teachers and adults and mentors can use them.
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  Excellent.
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  So as you develop these tools and I understand that Casey County was more or less your pilot county.
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  Um how do you see them growing and expanding to support youth beyond Casey County?
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  So,
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  we're currently in,
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  in the works of what we call scalability.
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  How are we gonna scale this project and so that we can get these brief health lesson cards in the hands of more people so that we have an increase in youth who are being educated on these topics.
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  And so we hope that um the brief health lesson cards can be put in the hands of um other teachers and adults and mentors.
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  These are cards that are printed and and is an actual product.
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  So we're in the works on how we can get these in the hands of more people.
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  I also wanna mention that we also developed a health ambassador program where the high school students in Casey County come to the elementary school and deliver health lessons.
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  Um They delivered five of them last in the spring,
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  delivered five of them in the spring.
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  And health ambassador program is championed by Megan Clay,
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  the 4h agent in Kelsey County,
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  Casey County in Casey County.
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  And so we are hopeful that that program can also be replicated maybe by other four age agents in other counties in Kentucky and even nationwide.
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  Dr Grubbs.
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  Thank you so much for joining us today and bringing awareness about the program of work that you're doing in Casey County and the potential for um it to impact youth across the state of Kentucky.
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  Thank you for having me and thank you for the opportunity to share this work.
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  Thank you for listening to Kentucky Smiles on talking facts.
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