Evaluating the Implementation and Impact of an Enhanced SNAP-Ed Delivered Curriculum in Low-income Preschools

Overview

This evaluation project aims to assess the impact of the Penn State Child Health Research Center's final year of SNAP-Ed funded nutrition education program in low-income preschool classrooms in Pennsylvania. This project uses a combination of nutrition education, repeated exposure to a variety of vegetables, and associative conditioning (using dips to make vegetables more appealing) to improve children's knowledge, acceptance, and intake of vegetables.

This evaluation project aims to assess the impact of the Child Health Research Center's final year of the SNAP-Ed funded nutrition education program in low-income preschool classrooms across Pennsylvania. This is the final year of SNAP-Ed funding in Pennsylvania (made possible by state carryforward funds) due to the elimination of this funding as a result of the 2025 Big Beautiful Bill. The intervention program, known as the Rainbow Veggie Club, is designed to enhance children's vegetable knowledge, acceptance, and intake through a comprehensive approach that combines structured nutrition education lessons, repeated exposure to a variety of vegetables, and associative conditioning techniques such as offering low-fat dips to make vegetables more appealing. The program will be implemented in a subset of classrooms where teachers and staff will receive training and follow a lesson calendar for the 2025-2026 school year. The consent process for children includes four communications sent home to parents/guardians within a two-week period, using both electronic and paper formats, a newsletter, a consent document, and a flyer with a QR code linking to a REDCap survey. Teachers can also participate in survey data collection, in which an implied consent process will be used. The first data collection visit includes a pre-tasting activity and Veggie Meter measurements to assess skin carotenoid levels as an objective indicator of vegetable intake. Trained staff members will conduct the Veggie Meter protocol, which is expected to take approximately one hour per classroom of 18 children, and results will be recorded on a standardized roster organized by child ID. These procedures ensure consistent data collection and allow researchers to evaluate whether the combination of education, exposure, and conditioning strategies leads to measurable improvements in children's dietary behaviors. Data from the pre-tasting data collection will inform which vegetable will be selected for an intake assessment in visit 2. During this visit, trained staff members will conduct individual hunger assessments and measure child intake of the selected vegetable by pre- and post-weighing each food sample. Children will have an 8-minute free access period to eat the vegetable served. After baseline data is collected, classrooms will receive a series of educational lessons from our SNAP-Ed educators from the Coordinated Approach to Child Health (CATCH) Early Childhood curriculum. These lessons will be enhanced with repeated exposure of a variety of vegetables served alongside a dip, "Taster's Awards" and other non-food rewards, and other related materials and supplies to increase learning and engagement. Outcome measurement (tasting, Veggie Meter, and intake assessment) is repeated after the educational program to evaluate change. In addition to child-level outcomes, feasibility and implementation data will be collected throughout the program to assess how practical and sustainable this intervention is in real-world preschool settings. These data include staff adherence to protocols, time required for each activity, supply needs, and teacher engagement. Collecting feasibility and implementation metrics is critical because it informs whether the Rainbow Veggie Club model can be scaled and replicated beyond the study classrooms, ensuring that future SNAP-Ed or similar programs can adopt evidence-based strategies that are both effective and operationally realistic.