Needs Assessment

Needs Assessment

USDA-WIC Program

Women, infants, and children (WIC)'s mission is to safeguard the health of low-income women, infants, and children up to age 5 who are at nutrition risk by providing nutritious foods to supplement diets, information of healthy eating, and referrals to health care.

A new program called Get Healthy Together was designed with childhood obesity as its focus. The goals of the Get Healthy Together project were two-fold. The first goal was to increase WIC staff self-efficacy regarding management of personal health behaviors associated with nutrition, and physical activity. And also to improve WIC staff counseling skills with WIC clients related to pediatric overweight prevention and management. Ultimately, the combination of these two goals was expected to have an impact on pediatric overweight through increased adoption of health-promoting behaviors by WIC staff and enhanced pediatric overweight counseling skills.

Organizational Analysis- In order to improve counseling skills, staff in the skills training intervention clinics participated in a one-day training workshop utilizing training procedures and materials that were previously used in other pediatric settings. The training materials were modified to be appropriate for the WIC setting. The training also included a viewing of the video entitled, "Beyond Nutrition Counseling: Reframing the Battle Against Obesity." A variety of counseling tools and nutrition and physical activity educational resources had been presented to WIC staff in focus groups. Using feedback from the staff and input from the Nutrition Task Team, the final set of tools consisted of the following: 1) BMI poster; 2) Nutrition and Activity Self-History form (NASH); 3) Report Card / Action Plan (ReCAP); and, 4) Talking Tips.

Task Analysis- Dietary and physical activity counseling skills are