Central PA FUN Food: Understanding Nutrition Initiative

The Central PA FUN Food: Understanding Nutrition Initiative will be focused on improving health literacy around food & nutrition in six counties in central Pennsylvania. Based on a partnership between the District Library Centers in Altoona and Johnstown, this project would serve residents of Indiana, Cambria, Somerset, Blair, Bedford & Huntingdon Counties. The Initiative has two main areas of focus: improving access to quality cooking & nutrition information & resources; and increasing family nutrition literacy. To improve library collections we will invest in quality physical and electronic resources around health, food and nutrition; improve linkages between library websites and resources like MedLine Plus; provide information about programs like and SciStarters to libraries & library users; and finally provide training on all these resources to library staff members so that they are prepared to assist the public. To improve family nutrition literacy, we will create a book club program for families to get more resources & skills around food and nutrition. It will be a hybrid phone/electronic book club where families sign up and get physical books & cookbooks and attend discussions via phone or internet to hear a speaker & discuss their experience with cooking healthy food as a family. To improve the diversity of our audience, we will diversify our advertising efforts to ensure that families without an internet connection hear about the program. All components of the program will be accessible without an internet connection.