Fair Haven Community Health Center's Diabetes Prevention Program

What is the SINGLE BEST THING WE CAN DO FOR OUR HEALTH?

Rebecca Kline — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:47:32 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aUaInS6HIGo

A Real Garden Tour Video Adventure!

Rebecca Kline — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:00:46 +0000

Watch the Fair Haven Community Health Center Diabetes Prevention Program Program Coordinator and Garden Manager give you a virtual tour of the program garden! It’s almost as awesome as being there physically.

http://youtu.be/IqVGRVhzAa0

Bike Day!

Rebecca Kline — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 19:52:17 +0000

In October 2011, the Fair Haven Community Health Center’s Diabetes Prevention Program (FHCHC DPP) expanded its exercise, nutrition, and gardening classes to engage in a one-time bicycle education program. Paul Hammer, local bicycle advocate and active member of the New Haven Bike Collective (http://www.newhavenbikecollective.com), volunteered his time to supply two DPP families with retrofitted bikes, helmets, and an educational ride down the Farmington Canal trail (http://www.farmingtoncanal.org).

On the sunny afternoon of October 16^th, the two participating DPP families met two FHCHC staff members, Hammer, and two volunteers from Farnam Neighborhood House, Liz Gambardella, Executive Director, and Frank Redente, Program Director, at the Winchester Avenue entrance to the canal trail. There, the participants were fitted with helmets while Paul demonstrated basic bicycle safety guidelines. Soon afterwards, the group of 14 adults and children set off on their adventure. Some walked their bikes, holding small sons and daughters at the same time and enjoying the beautiful trail and company. Some rode ahead and turned back to meet the group a couple of hours later. Paul took frequent opportunities to explain the historical plaques along the canal, and to provide bike coaching.

At the end of the day, satisfied with an afternoon of group exercise, all participants were given the bikes to take home with them as a gift from the New Haven Bike Collective. The helmets were provided and then donated to the participated DPP families by Elm City Cycling (http://elmcitycycling.org).

FHCHC DPP/Chabaso Garden Greenhouse Is Up!

Rebecca Kline — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:08:09 +0000

With the incredible generosity of Jose Luis, the husband of one of our program’s participants, Mike, owner of Growell in Cheshire, and a number of his employees, our greenhouse was mounted this past Saturday. They donated their time and expertise, in partnership with Oscar, maintenance manager from Chabaso Bakery. This means we can grow crops through the winter, continuing to provide nutrient-dense produce to our Diabetes Prevention Program participants and their families in a season when there is usually less.

Wonderful article about our Diabetes Prevention Program and Gardening Component in the Yale Daily News

Rebecca Kline — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:28:05 +0000

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/nov/04/local-movement-grows-to-provide-fresh-veggies-for/

Community-Based Participatory Research Overview

Rebecca Kline — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:17:49 +0000

Guest blogger Rosette Chakkalakal will be posting updates on the Community-Based Participatory Research project that she is managing with the FHCHC DPP and Yale’s Bright Bodies Program. This post is an overview of the research so far:

We are using a community-based research approach to conduct a program evaluation of Fair Haven Community Health Center’s (FHCHC) Diabetes Prevention Program. Our team includes program leadership and staff from the FHCHC Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), the Bright Bodies program, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program at Yale. The program evaluation specifically focuses on making the program more family-centered and improving the quality of the self-monitoring aspect of the program. Over the summer, our project team met several times to review the processes and goals of each program and find opportunities to incorporate additional “family time” activities in each session. Some of these activities include family food tastings of healthy recipes and exercising together. We also devised a strategy to encourage participants to self-monitor their physical activity using quality improvement techniques to attain a goal of having 50% of our participants return their exercise diaries by the end of the 12-week program. Right now, we are meeting twice per month to think about how these new interventions and strategies are working as we implement them with the current participants of the programs. We are constantly thinking of ways to adapt the program to make it better—for example, we haven’t seen many of the participants return their exercise diaries so we will now be giving out “Bright Bodies Bucks” to participants who return their diaries that we will then use to enter them in raffles. We also realize that right now, we only receive feedback from the program leaders regarding these new elements of the curriculum. We will start handing out brief “activity evaluation” forms to the participants so they can tell us what they think of the programs as well.

Bright Bodies Bucks

Rebecca Kline — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:14:58 +0000

A Bright Bodies “Buck” is basically a raffle ticket. We will have a raffle twice per each 12-week session. When a participant in the Bright Bodies program does the following, they earn a buck (raffle ticket) towards a raffle prize:

Weigh the same weight as you did the week before (i.e., don’t gain weight)
Weigh less than you did the week before
Bring in your exercise log for the staff to review

___________________________

Congratulations, you’ve earn a:

BRIGHT BODIES BUCK

NAME __________________

Farmer’s Market Cooking Demo Performed by Diabetes Prevention Program Participants!

Rebecca Kline — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 23:40:53 +0000

Photos by Robert Lisak

New Haven Register Reports on FHCHC DPP/Chabaso Garden and New Haven Farms Expansion!

Rebecca Kline — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:26:13 +0000

The New Haven Register printed an article this past Sunday on the FHCHC DPP/Chabaso Garden and New Haven Farms initiative to improve health and community development through urban agriculture.

Read the article and watch the video here!

http://nhregister.com/articles/2011/08/20/news/new_haven/doc4e50703b2d8a7967150652.txt

New Haven Independent Reports on Expansion of FHCHC DPP/Chabaso Garden

Rebecca Kline — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 16:50:38 +0000

New Haven Farms, a new nonprofit evolving from the success of the FHCHC DPP/Chabaso Garden, recently got some press in local newspaper New Haven Independent. Read the article here!

http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/urban_farming_breaks_ground/