Faithful Families Eating Smart and Moving More

UT Extension would like to team up with a couple of Jefferson County Churches for a Nutrition Program. Faithful Families Eating Smart and Moving More promotes healthy eating and physical activity in communities of faith. It is co-taught by University of Tennessee Extension Nutrition Educators and trained lay leaders from your faith community through small group sessions. Lay Leaders bring the spiritual element into each session, through discussion questions and “Thinking it through” prompts in each lesson.

Faithful Families addresses the problems of being overweight and obesity by promoting health eating and physical activity through implementation of research based guidelines, programs and changes that promote health in their faith community. Faith communities that participate in Faithful Families will:

• Offer one Faithful Families class with nine sessions.
• Implement one guideline supportive of health.
• Make one change to promote health.

Why Faith Communities?

Faith communities have a special role to play in helping their members eat smart and move more. Faith communities care about individual members’ health, have programs and services that support their members, are centers of their communities and have leaders who are widely respected.

Faith Based Programs Are Important

• Health messages from the faith community may have a larger impact on individuals by making the link between faith and health.
• Faith Community members may be more open to health messages received from faith community leaders.
• Many people will share the information they receive in the faith community with their family at home.
• Faith communities can spread health messages into a large community through elder care, youth and childcare programs.
• Changes made within a faith communities encourage people to make healthy choices.

What can the program do?

Faithful Families is more than a nutrition program. Faithful Families takes a comprehensive look at the faith community including the ways your community can become supportive of health and wellness. As part of this program, your faith community will adopt practices that will support healthy eating and physical activity in your community of faith.

People who eat smart and move more reduce their risk for serious health problems such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Maintaining an active lifestyle and choosing healthy foods helps us feel good, and improves the quality of our lives. Faith community members can be encouraged to be good caretakers of their physical bodies.

If you would like to discuss your church being involved in the Faithful Families program, you may contact Sarah Vaden or Susie Hix at 865-397-2969 or svaden@utk.edu

Programs in agriculture and natural resources, 4-H youth development, family and consumer sciences, and resource development. University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture and county governments cooperating. UT Extension provides equal opportunities in programs and employment.