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Assessing Similarities and Differences in Perspectives on Texas SNAP-Ed Programming

Do Leadership, Educators, and Participants Agree?

Association of SNAP Nutrition Education Administrators Annual Conference

February, 7, 2023

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Introduction

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Gabby Battaglia, MPH

Database Administrator

Texas SNAP-Ed State Agency

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SNAP-Ed in Texas

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16 Implementing Agencies

79 Subcontractors

254 Counties

Over 4,000 Sites

Number of Interventions per county

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Poll

How well do you think your agency’s programing is meeting the needs of the communities you serve?

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https://pollev.com/gabriellab484

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Poll

Do you think your SNAP-Ed participants would agree?

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https://pollev.com/gabriellab484

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Study Purpose

To determine if the perspectives on Texas SNAP-Ed programming at the leadership level was in alignment with the perspectives of our program facilitators and participants.

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Research Questions

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What are the facilitators and barriers to nutrition and physical activity in the communities we serve?

How well does SNAP-Ed programming currently address those barriers and facilitators?

Is SNAP-Ed programming received by participants in ways that are expected?

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Recruitment Methods

10 eligible IAs

7 IAs participated

Inclusion Criteria

Direct education programming
At least 4 weeks long
Targeted for adults

Recruitment & Selection

Presented to eligible IAs
Voluntary participation
IA-specific sampling

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Data Collection Methods

3 surveys
Multiple-choice and Likert scale questions
Assets, needs, attitudes about SNAP-Ed
Available in English and Spanish

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As for collecting data, I created three surveys- one for Implementing Agency leadership, one for educators and one for participants. The questions were almost identical, except the survey for participants asked about their thoughts while the survey for leadership and educators asked their assumptions about participants. For example, one question for leadership and educators was “How hard do you think it is for your participants to eat healthy?”, while participants were asked directly “how hard do you think it is to east healthy?”/ Surveys contained a combination of multiple choice and likert scale questions and could be taken digitally or using pen and paper. IA leadership and educators were sent the survey to take on their own time, while participants were administered the survey at the same time they completed our standard SNAP-Ed evaluation post-test. Surveys were available in English and Spanish, and educators were provided an introductory video or script to explain the survey to participants before administering it.

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Analytical Methods

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Calculated relative frequencies

Conducted Chi-squared and Fisher’s Exact tests

Examined significance across groups

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Results: Demographics

Group

36 IA leaders
34 program facilitators
302 program participants

Age, Gender and Race

Mostly white women
Mostly aged 18-59

Ethnicity and Education

Participants more likely to be Hispanic/Latino
Participants less educated

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Now, for the results of the study. There was a high number of surveys from SNAP-Ed administrators, I think may have been caused by some educators accidentally taking the leadership survey

Most of the survey respondents were white women between the ages of 18-59 with no significant difference between groups.

However, SNAP-Ed participants were more likely to be Hispanic or Latino compared to educators and leadership.

Educators and leadership were more likely to have a four-year college degree or higher compared to SNAP-Ed participants, with leadership being more educated overall than program facilitators.

This is unsurprising, as there are likely educational requirements to hold SNAP-Ed educator and leadership positions. However, the emphasis on traditional education may reinforce historical power imbalances, ignore that racial and class barriers to receiving formal education, and minimize the importance of lived experience as a useful source of knowledge.

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Results: Assets and Needs

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Results: Assets and Needs

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Results: Assets and Needs

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Reasons it is Easy to Eat Healthy
Most Popular Responses	Leadership	Educators	Participants
1	Importance	Importance	Importance
2	Influence of family and friends	Knowledge of healthy foods	Knowledge of healthy foods
3	Knowledge of healthy foods; taste	Influence of family and friends	Cooking skills

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Results: Assets and Needs

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Reasons it is Difficult to Eat Healthy
Most Popular Responses	Leadership	Educators	Participants
1	Price	Price	Price
2	Lack of time	Influence of family and friends	Influence of family and friends
3	Unhealthy cultural foods	Unhealthy cultural foods	Unhealthy cultural foods

Unsurprisingly, cost was cited as the biggest barrier to healthy eating across all three groups. This highlights the importance of SNAP-Ed partnering with programs that can help reduce the costs of healthy food, such as produce prescription, nutrition incentive, or food distribution programs.

A concerning result is that the unhealthiness of participant’s cultural foods was seen as a top barrier across all groups. This is a harmful narrative often perpetuated by mainstream nutrition sources. All cultures have foods that are more and less healthy, and participants should not feel like they have to sacrifice their culture in the name of health, but rather, be taught ways to honor both their family history and their body. Considering this belief was shared among all groups, it is imperative that Texas SNAP-Ed dismantle these stereotypes among all the levels.

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Results: Assets and Needs

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Reasons it is Easy to Exercise
Most Popular Responses	Leadership	Educators	Participants
1	Importance	Importance	Importance
2	Have exercise partners	Have exercise partners	Have time
3	Enjoyment	Enjoyment	Enjoyment

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Results: Assets and Needs

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Reasons it is Difficult to Exercise
Most Popular Responses	Leadership	Educators	Participants
1	Lack of time	Lack of time	Lack of time
2	Lack of safe place	Lack of knowledge	Lack of knowledge
3	Lack of knowledge	Lack of safe place;dislike; no exercise partners	No exercise partners

Lack of knowledge was one of the most commonly selected barriers to physical activity. This shows physical activity may not be discussed enough in SNAP-Ed classes, but that can easily be addressed through altering programming.

The barriers of lack of a people to exercise with can also be somewhat addressed by offering more SNAP-Ed group physical activity classes in a variety of locations.

Interestingly, you’ll note that both leadership and educators believed lack of a safe place was a barrier for participants, but that was not a common response among those actually taking SNAP-Ed classes..

A more difficult barrier, which was also was the most common, is time. All physical activity programming implemented by Texas SNAP-Ed should take this limitation into consideration and be mindful of what activities are being offered and/or promoted while acknowledging the current structure of American society makes leisure time a luxury that many SNAP-Ed participants may not have.

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Results: Relevancy and Relatability

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Results: Relevancy and Relatability

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Conclusions

High Consensus

Barriers to healthy eating
Facilitators to healthy eating
Barriers to engaging in physical activity
Facilitators to engaging in physical activity

Low Consensus

Program relevancy
Educator relatability
Perceived ease of healthy eating
Perceived ease of engaging in physical activity*

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*not a statistically significant result

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Conclusions

Knowledge & Beliefs

More confidence in nutrition knowledge than physical activity
Cultural foods are not healthy

Barriers & Facilitators

Values
Time and money
Social support

Thoughts on Programming

Educators are often relatable
Classes aren’t always relevant

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Participants see their knowledge of healthy foods as a factor that helps them eat healthy, while many feel that their knowledge of physical activity is lacking, and are interested in learning more about it. And as I mentioned earlier, all groups hold assumptions about the healthfulness of cultural foods. SNAP-Ed programming should be examined to see if it perpetuates these stereotypes

SNAP-Ed participants indicated perceived importance as the top reason why it was easy for them to eat healthy and/or exercise

On the other hand, participants thought that factors outside of their control, such as the cost of food and the amount of free time they have, make it harder to live healthy lifestyles.

The influence of family and friends also makes it harder for some SNAP-Ed participants to eat healthy, while a lack of family or friends to join them makes it harder for some participants to engage in physical activity. Others listed social support as a facilitator to healthy behavior, demonstrating the range of experiences by participants.

Despite most participants finding their class facilitators relatable, there is a wide variety of perspectives on the relevancy of the content of SNAP-Ed programming.

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Follow-Up With IAs

Who: All IAs

What: Presentation & Group Discussion

Topics:

Study results
Institutional limitations
Reducing survey burden
Building trust in communities
Assessing + increasing program relevance
Connecting IAs to one another for support

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Limitations

Convenience Sample

7 out of 16 IAs participated
~50% zip codes in Texas represented
Only direct education participants
Leaves out SNAP-Ed non-participants

Response Bias

Social desirability
Comprehension

Impact on Participants

Time burden
Limited response options
One-way communication

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There were several limitations to this study, especially considering it was conducted on a limited timeline.

First off, it utilized a convenience sample of participants from only 7 of the 17 SNAP-Ed agencies in Texas. Participation was also limited to only direct education participants, once again for ease of implementation. This led to only about half of the zip codes in Texas represented.

This study also didn’t include individuals that are eligible but do not participate in SNAP-Ed programming. This group is hard to reach, but their opinion is invaluable as it can give us insight into ways to make SNAP-Ed programming more accessible to all that are eligible.

There were also issues due to response bias. Social desirability bias may lead to participants under-reporting barriers or rating programming more favorably than they truly believe. In addition, materials weren’t pre-tested for comprehension and there were typos in the surveys which may have made them more difficult to understand.

I also want to acknowledge the impact this study had on our participants. This survey did take time and although SNAP-Ed participants were compensated with a cookbook, educators and leadership were unable to receive any reimbursement for their time. Given that the response options were multiple choice and likert scales, this gave respondents limited options, potentially missing out on other important information. And lastly, a survey does not allow for the facilitation of two-way dialogue, which would not only generate better data, but could help participants and educators feel more seen and heard.

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Questions?

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So Now What?

How do we ensure the perspectives of our program leadership and implementers match those of our target audience?

By letting those impacted by programs lead those programs.

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Our Guiding Framework

González, R. (2019). The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership. Movement Strategy Center.

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Texas started here

The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership

In order to make that happen, Texas has chosen a theoretical framework to guide us.

Many of you may be familiar with the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership, which has been introduced in SNAP-Ed connection Racial Equity webinars. I believe it was the webinar #2.

This framework was developed by Rosa Gonzalez of Facilitating Power based on other public participation tools, and lays out a blueprint for groups to develop solutions guided by the communities that will be impacted by those solutions. The spectrum focuses on developmental stages that ultimately elevates community engagement efforts to community owned, community led, community driven solutions.

The spectrum starts with phase 0, ignore, where the community engagement is non-existent and the community is denied access and excluded from decision-making process.

Then as community engagement evolves along the spectrum, there is a fifth stage where democratic participation between community and the entities purposed to serve those communities is fostered and equity through community-driven decision-making is truly supported. The revolution at the center of this stage is manifested in a bridged divide between community & governance.

Right now, the Texas state agency is at the left end of the spectrum.

One could argue the survey Gabby conducted could be considered stage 2, Consult, and there are various activities we implement that is sprinkled along stages 2-4, but our operations predominately do not involve the SNAP-Ed communities.

Also, our Implementing Agencies are likely to be in similar situations where community engagement efforts are varied and lack a direct connection from community to governance.

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Poll

What stage along the spectrum do you think your organization is in?

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https://pollev.com/gabriellab484

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Current Initiatives

Beginning New Projects

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Redesigning Reporting

Revamping IA Procurement

Conducting Market Research

Developing a SNAC

Current Processes Reimagined

So now I’m going to present some steps Texas is taking to move us along the spectrum

First, we’re reimagining some of our current processes such as redesigning our reporting requirements to free up more bandwidth for community engagement and revamping our procurement of IAs to make it more accessible to new awardees, hopefully, community-based organizations that might not have had access to SNAP-Ed previously and a more community-oriented grant than we’ve had before.

We’re also leading new projects at the state agency level, such as the development of our statewide social marketing campaign based on more intimate formative research using focus groups and informational interviewing to engage community members more directly, and the development of a State Nutrition Action Collaborative, or SNAC, with the hope of leveraging a newly formed network of partnerships to engage a wider audience that includes communities and community members.

Our aim with these changes in processes and new projects are going to move us along the Community Engagement to Ownership model spectrum to a community-owned SNAP-Ed.

I am going to hand it back over to Gabby to talk about the process change she is leading.

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Reporting Redesign- Current Requirements

All data entered into PEARS
Quarterly data reports
Monthly progress reports
Yearly State Plans
Annual Report

…for a total of 18 reports per year

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Reporting Redesign- Current Issues

Time burden

For IAs and SA

Knowledge/skills required

Can be exclusionary

Misalignment of data priorities

FNS v. SA v. IAs v. community
Statewide goals, KPIs, evaluation framework

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So clearly, we have a lot of reporting requirements. This places substantial burden on our IAs and State Agency staff. This takes away time that IAs could be spending serving their community and time the state agency could be spending supporting IAs and facilitating community engagement efforts.

There is data analysis skills required to complete our reports, especially with the new requirements from FNS, which some Implementing Agencies may struggle with.

Both of these things also have the potential to exclude groups that may not have the skills or resources to keep up with what sometimes feels like countless reports from receiving a SNAP-Ed gran

In addition, the information we collect from participants and Implementing Agencies comes from requirements set by our agency’s leadership and FNS. But, is that the same information that matters to the community? What about our Implementing Agencies?

There are many ways this shows up. The SNAP-Ed State Plan requires us to set statewide goals and then report on our progress towards those goals in the Annual Report. And lthough no longer required by FNS, Texas also has IAs set Key Performance Indicators that they report on to us on a monthly basis. Texas also has standardized program evaluation procedures centered around the SNAP-Ed Evaluation Framework. I can’t speak for our IAs and their KPI selection, but when it comes to the State Agency’s goals and priority evaluation indicators, there is minimal to no consultation with our target audience on what they think our desired outcomes and outputs should be. . Typically, we define success as progress towards our statewide goals, SNAP-Ed Evaluation Framework indicators, and IAs KPIs. But without any consultation with local stakeholders, how do we know if our ideas of success are in alignment with what they would consider to be successful SNAP-Ed programming?

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Reporting Redesign- Solutions

Eliminate 16 reports

Focus on PEARS entry

Analyze Data for IAs

SA Monitors Progress

What else?

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There’s a few steps we’ve taken to help address these issues. First off, we’ve eliminated our quarterly and monthly reports, which ends up being 16 reports per year. Instead, we’ll be focusing on ensuring IAs are entering quality data into PEARS. We then will be analyzing program data for IAs, and monitoring that data on a quarterly basis to see if IAs are meeting their goals.

Despite the work being done to cut back on the number of reports we require, IAs still need to enter all their data into PEARS which takes a significant amount of time and resources. Other than allotting funding for IAs to hire more data-related staff, we haven’t quite found a solution for groups where even that level of reporting makes the grant inaccessible. This is something I’m continuing to think about and will gladly take any suggestions.

These steps also don’t address the fact that the community is not involved in the processes of determining our data priorities. This is another weakness of our operations that the State agency needs to significantly work on. Obviously, there’s only so much we can do within the limitations of SNAP-Ed requirements, but there are certaintly ways to involve the community in the conversation that aren’t currently happening, so moving forward, that’s something we need to prioritize.

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Procurement of Implementing Agencies

Current Process: Competitive bid

Issues:

Notification of grant opportunity
Resources required to apply
Myth of meritocracy
Reviewer bias

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Here in Texas, we contract out all of our direct service programming to nonprofit, universities, and other government agency groups across the state. Our agency requires us to go through a competitive bid process where we release a request for applications which gets posted online. Organizations submit proposals by completing a large application packet, and then those applications are reviewed by a group of state agency employees who evaluate and score applications using a prescribed scoring tool.

Our agency’s current approach to procurement creates numerous issues to implementing a procurement through a Community Engagement to Ownership lens.

There are some specific points of interest our team is looking to revamp with a Community Engagement to Ownership lens.

Our notification of solicitations could be improved. Lesser-known grassroots leaders in historically excluded communities may not know that there is funding available for them.

Not to mention, the applications must fit into a specific format that may be challenging for groups without formal training in grant writing. The application process also takes significant time and energy to go through, which not all change leaders may have.

In addition, hosting a “competitive” process perpetuates the myth of meritocracy and that the smartest/most organized/most creative groups with the best ideas will be the ones to receive the grant without acknowledging outside factors and systems of oppression that prevent merit-based opportunities from being truly equal.

Lastly, any process that involves grading is going to be subject to the biases of those in charge of reviewing.

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Procurement of Implementing Agencies

Potential Solutions:

Targeted outreach
Tailored selection criteria
Application support
Participatory Grant Making

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We are looking into some potential solutions to these issues through a Community Engagement to Ownership lens.

First, we can conduct more targeted outreach and notification of solicitations. Instead of focusing on sending out the request for applications to groups like research universities, we should leverage the community connections we’ve been building and hope to increase- focusing some outreach efforts on local grassroots and nontraditional organizations that are comprised of community members.

To take things even further, we’ve been discussing creating a RFP with specific selection criteria tailored to prioritizing under-resourced, community-run groups.

We’ve also considered the possibility of offering application support in the form of publicly available tools and resources and trainings perjaps even technical assistance calls to interested parties to help those that may not have the resources or experience to go through our grant application process on their own.

And in line with the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership, looking into implementing participatory grant making practices.

If your state agency or organization implements participatory grant making please find me at conference so we can exchange contact information. I’d like to connect and pick your brain or connect with your colleagues.

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Conducting Market Research

Conducted by:

Rescue-Health communications agency

Target Audience

SNAP-Ed eligible individuals

Methods

Focus groups
Interviews

Topics

Obstacles and motivations to healthy behaviors

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Forming a SNAC- Goals

Goals:

Coalesce statewide nutrition programs
Establish collaborative governance
Unlock collective power
Build capacity for community ownership

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The last initiative we are looking to develop this year and evolve over next few years is the development of a state nutrition action collaborative.

Marcus, my team mate, and I have worked together over last 6 months trying to brainstorm how we make something like a new governing body that includes community members actually happen. Something Marcus intelligently brought up was we needed an infrastructure to actually make governance happen- we felt a state nutrition action collaborative that would start out with our network of 16 Implementing Agencies and 70+ subcontractors and eventually expand to community members and other similar nutrition program networks like the SNAP-Ed.

An analogy that we’ve found helpful is one of the horse and the cart. The Community Engagement to Ownership Model is the CART. And the state nutrition action collaborative will serve as the HORSE- pulling our Community Engagement to Ownership cart along the spectrum to community ownership.

The collaborative we create will then hep state agency team develop new goals oriented around community engagement efforts for SNAP-Ed and ultimately create collective power and collective understanding.

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Conclusion

Texas has started taking steps to move along the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership

But we still have a long way to go

Biggest challenge: implementing this framework within the confines of demands put on us by our own organization (state agency) and FNS

How do we overcome this?

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Coming full circle, Gabby’s study may be the start of our realization we- administrators, educators, and program participants (communities) may not all be on same page.

What can we do? Engage the community and make time and space to learn from them and give them what they need unadulterated by grant requirements, industrial complexes, and unequal power dynamics.

Our first biggest challenges Implementing the Community Engagement to Ownership framework within the confines of demands put on us by our own organization (state agency) and FNS or like funders.

I also think another big challenge not on slide that will certainly come later… as we get closer to community is grappling with our own socioeconomic status as administrators and implementers and researchers and our place in the economic hierarchy in comparison to the community members we are trying to engage and give power to. Our community member have less access, less time, less freedom.

What does a new power dynamic look? What can we do?

I don’t have answer.

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Questions?

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You may contact me at gabriella.battaglia@hhs.texas.gov

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