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Report: SNAP-Ed Southeast Region Tri-State Health and Racial Equity Workforce Assessment

In Federal Fiscal Year 2024, PHI’s Center for Wellness and Nutrition conducted a SNAP-Ed workforce assessment of racial equity across implementing agencies in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, in order to better understand strengths and opportunities for improvement to center social justice and equity in SNAP-Ed.

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The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed), administered by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), supports evidence-based initiatives that provide nutrition and physical activity education to people using or eligible for SNAP. SNAP-Ed initiatives also include public health approaches to improve policies, systems and environments (PSEs) in communities and social marketing campaigns to increase awareness and nudge behavior change.

In Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) 2024, PHI’s Center for Wellness and Nutrition conducted a SNAP-Ed workforce assessment of racial equity across implementing agencies in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, in order to better understand strengths and opportunities for improvement to center social justice and equity in SNAP-Ed.

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This study indicates that SNAP-Ed implementers know, respect and trust their communities and partners and prioritize program impact. Areas for growth include more dedicated resources for compensating and authentically engaging with community members, and funding strengths-based approaches. Additional growth opportunities include establishing policies to ensure all staff are regularly trained and receive ongoing professional development on power dynamics, equity and racial justice.

A full summary of the health and racial equity workforce assessment can be found here: Southeast Region Tri-State SNAP-Ed Workforce Assessment Infographic.

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[Centering People] is what [we] think is fundamental to SNAP-Ed programming and everything else we do. However, it's much easier said than done. We don't always end up following through with this especially due to limited staffing/time/funding to pay community members to be involved. South Carolina SNAP-Ed Staff
fresh produce from farmers market
I am proud of the relationships that our instructors and community workers build with community members over time throughout the class series…I think we create really open and safe channels for feedback and a lot of the qualitative feedback that I get from participants comes from my instructors. We've been able to adapt several of our programs based on some of that feedback that we've gotten through those participant instructor relationships and channels. Georgia SNAP-Ed Staff

Recommended Actions to Improve Health and Racial Equity in the SNAP-Ed Workforce

To center equity throughout the stages of program implementation, several recommendations are proposed:

  • Meaningfully involve community members in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of programs
  • Create opportunities for qualitative feedback from community members
  • Prioritize trust building with community members
  • Prioritize recruiting nutrition educators with racial and ethnically diverse backgrounds
  • Provide community engagement activities that share decision-making with the community
  • Continue fostering cross-sector relationships to reach more people
  • Engage with IAs throughout the region to share resources and problem-solve together

Recommended Trainings and Professional Development Opportunities

  • Power dynamics, health equity, and racial justice (annual, required training)
  • Authentic community engagement overview & approaches
  • Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR)
  • Approaches to collecting and using continuous feedback data for decision-making and program improvement
  • Asset-based community development
  • Facilitating and mobilizing Community Advisory Boards
  • Ethical storytelling and asset framing
  • Assessing unintended impacts of PSEs through evaluation methods (e.g., ripple effect mapping, outcome harvesting)
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Learn more: Identifying Opportunities to Deepen the Integration of Social Justice Within SNAP-Ed Efforts

Since Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) 2022, PHI CWN has been conducting a formative evaluation, adding a racial equity lens to the SNAP-Ed Evaluation Framework. In FFY 2023, the evaluation efforts expanded to explore racial equity among SNAP-Ed eligible adults. Building off the work started in FFY 2022, PHI CWN conducted the FFY 2024 evaluation, focusing on the perspective of implementing agency (IA) staff through a health and racial equity workforce assessment. In partnership with North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, PHI CWN conducted a workforce assessment of racial equity across IAs in the three states.

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