Family literacy and nutrition outcomes of the pilot Books & Cooks family education program

Literacy and food security are co-occurring public health issues that disproportionately affect families with low income. Children who struggle with literacy and who come from households that experience food insecurity are less likely to achieve academic success and are more likely to experience health issues later in life. Books & Cooks is a brief, theory-based, family education intervention that addresses literacy and food security by providing educational programming, grade-appropriate nutrition-themed books, cooking demonstrations, and home-delivered meal kits. Program components and evaluation measures were selected using the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). The Books & Cooks pilot pre/post study included 75 families from households with low income, where most adult participants were Female (70, 93%), White (43, 57%), not Hispanic (61, 81%), married (27, 37%), and between the ages of 30 and 39 (40, 53%). Child participants were in kindergarten (13, 12%), first grade (25, 23%), second grade (21, 19%), third grade (21, 19%), fourth grade (16, 15%), and fifth grade (14, 13%). Over the course of this pilot intervention, participants reported positive changes across all SCT constructs, with environmental components showing the most consistent gains. Environmental outcomes that improved include the home literacy environment (p = 0.001), parental resources for reading (p < 0.001), food security status (p = 0.002), and nutrition security (p < 0.001). These results suggest that addressing environmental components may be most feasible from a programming perspective and most beneficial to families, since environmental barriers may prevent families from engaging in certain healthy behaviors. Furthermore, these results suggest that interdisciplinary programs may achieve promising results in our specific context, ultimately providing benefits to families in need.