Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program

The Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) is a federally funded program designed to provide nutrition education to low-income youth and families with young children. EFNEP's [Page 250]aim is to improve the following for its target population: diets and nutritional welfare; nutrition knowledge; ability to select healthful food choices; food production, preparation, storage, safety, and sanitation practices; and financial and resource management to assist them in the achievement of healthy, active lifestyles.

Thus, nutrition education provided via EFNEP is defined in a broad sense, that is, in addition to teaching topics traditionally considered to be nutrition education, programs may provide participants with educational opportunities to assist them in more effectively managing their resources, gardening, food preservation, personal development, and/or weight management. Local EFNEP programs are granted considerable autonomy in their approaches used to accomplish the program's aims. This allows for ample consideration of cultural factors that may be apparent both in the teaching and learning styles of people hailing from varied backgrounds.

Created in response to President Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 War on Poverty, EFNEP is the oldest federally supported nutrition education program in existence in the United States. Support for EFNEP's development and implementation included legislation to initiate the program via a pilot program, provide national funding on an ongoing basis, and train EFNEP nutrition education staff.

EFNEP is administered by U.S. Department of Agriculture's Cooperative State Research, Extension, and Education Service (CSREES) through funding distributed to U.S. Land-Grant Universities/Institutions in all 50 states, both of those funded in 1862, as well as those funded in 1890, and the following U.S. territories: American Samoa, Guam, Micronesia, Northern Marianas, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Federal legislation mandates that “to the maximum extent practicable” EFNEP be delivered via paraprofessional staff “hired from the indigenous target population.” The employment of paraprofessional staff as peer nutrition educators has been an integral part of EFNEP since its inception. Paraprofessionals are those who lack a baccalaureate degree in the subject matter under which their work falls and who provide services under the supervision of a degreed professional. In the 1960s, paraprofessional staff lines were developed in the social, educational, and health fields as part of the “New Careers” movement, a movement whose goals were to provide the unemployed and underemployed career training and jobs as a means to help them out of poverty, to use a cost-effective strategy to meet the increased demand for human services workers that had been created by the “War on Poverty,” and to enhance service delivery by utilizing the inherent skills and life experience knowledge of those residing in the community.

EFNEP paraprofessional educators remain peer educators who share ethnicities, languages, food customs, food access, and values, as well as common understandings of community beliefs and barriers to nutrition education. They demonstrate an empathy, sensitivity, and responsibility for the needs of those living in their communities. Thus, paraprofessional–participant trust, caring, reciprocity, and respect characterize EFNEP education.

These factors enhance emotional support and assist in the identification of participant problems, particularly with regard to sensitive participant issues, for example, their inability to maintain food security for their families. Program participants perceive their peer educators as being like themselves and therefore consider them to be credible information sources and persons in whom they are willing to confide information needed for effective program delivery.

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