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STRIDE in the Community

STRIDE’s mission includes fostering collaborative partnerships with the local community. In this column, I hope to showcase the various ways we pursue this goal. I wish our newsletter came out weekly so that I could share the good work of the many agencies and organizations that partner with us. As it is, I will have to highlight one or two each quarter.

As many of you know, our Pink and Dude Chefs Program has rapidly developed during the past year. Begun as a research study, this nutrition education and culinary skills training program has been offered afterschool at Mesa Middle School for the past six years. This fall, the program became available as an online training and was run by San Luis Obispo County YMCA in their Shandon, Calif., afterschool program. The online training is a big step forward in our goal of sharing what we've learned with other communities.

The Pink and Dude Chefs in Shandon are part of a larger cohort of students across the country who are participating in a research study examining the impact of this program. Research partners at Vanderbilt University and the YMCA of Middle Tennessee are also running classes. This national collaboration not only helps pre-teens learn about nutrition and cooking and share this information with their families but also advances the body of knowledge on adolescent obesity prevention strategies.

We are grateful to the San Luis Obispo County YMCA for working with us to create healthy communities and thrilled that more local students have received this nutrition education and acquired cooking skills. 

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