December 15, 2018

Traffic Light Food Guide for South Park Healthy Families Program with Sea Mar

Student nurses: Aurora Peterson, Avery O’Hara, and Carla Cobb

Nurse Faculty: Hilary Jauregui, DNP, MN, RN

As part of the UW School of Nursing, our team formed a collaborative partnership with Sea Mar Community Health Center of the South Park neighborhood in Seattle for our Community Health Nursing clinical rotation. We combined our expertise as nursing students with Sea Mar’s knowledge and experience of the South Park community to direct our attention toward Sea Mar’s Healthy Families obesity treatment program. Sea Mar’s Health Educator, Mr. Brian Cedeño, presented our team with a project intended to target the high rates of pediatric obesity in South Park. The goal of our project is to reduce childhood obesity in South Park. To contribute to this goal, we set two objectives, to: (1) modify and adapt the Seattle Children’s Research Institute SHIFT food guide to be culturally and linguistically appropriate for the South Park Community, and (2) understand the food environment within the community of South Park. By adapting this guide, we aimed to build the capacity of Sea Mar to implement in the Healthy Families obesity treatment program. Our team named the project Traffic Light Food Guide and presented a finished product to Mr. Cedeño and key South Park community leaders for review and feedback at the end of the quarter. With a more culturally appropriate nutrition resource on hand, Sea Mar will be able to begin implementation of their new Healthy Families program and strengthen their ability to help community members implement healthy lifestyle changes that fits within the culture of the South Park community.

Read the full report here!