Hamilton residents Kenny and Heidi Smith dance March 21, 2015 during an event at New Covenant United Methodist Church in Hamilton. Heidi Smith has led efforts to educate Hamiltonians about exercise and eating well. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.)
Heidi Smith claps during her class March 21, 2015 at New Covenant United Methodist Church. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.)
Sandy MacDonald, Elaine Davison and Jean Tuma participate in a March 21, 2015 dance class at New Covenant UMC. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.)
Not everyone realizes that sodium and salt mean the same thing on a food label.
It’s the kind of thing that has to be taught, and not everyone gets the lesson.
Enter Heidi Smith, a registered nurse, director of NJ FamilyCare Outreach in Trenton and member of New Covenant United Methodist Church in Hamilton. With the help of a $36,000 grant from the state Department of Health, Smith leads her church’s efforts to reach into the congregation (and beyond) and educate families about the benefits of better eating, exercise and overall wellness, and the need to avoid obesity.
New Covenant’s approach to a healthier community began with a subtle shift in thinking by the state. The DOH, Smith says, was looking for faith-based agencies to help drive the message about health. The subtle shift is that the state wanted to invest in early-stage education, rather than programs at the treatment level.
“They’d been giving to clinics,” Smith says of the DOH. “But [the people in them] are already sick.”
Sick, by the way, is the word Smith used two years ago to describe her congregation. As a registered nurse since 1982, Smith could see that her congregation needed some help to get healthier. And she wanted to be part of a longer-term plan to get them there.
This attitude fits the adventurous Smith, whose original nursing dream was to be part of an air ambulance crew. She was drawn to the idea of emergency medical care from a helicopter, but realized—before she ever stepped onto a chopper—that she didn’t really want to just treat patients and run.
“I wanted longer relationships [with patients],” she says. “I wanted to see them get better.”
So the “Faithful Families Eating Smart and Moving More” program, which focuses on healthy lifestyles and not just spot treatments or temporary fixes, was an ideal fit for Smith to look into.
The church originally worked with a $28,000 grant awarded in 2013. The current grant, New Covenant’s second, ends in June.
Faithful Families focuses on “providing families in faith communities with the skills needed to eat healthier foods and be physically active,” according to North Carolina State University, which developed the program. The curriculum uses nutrition and physical activity educators to train lay leaders from faith communities in small group sessions to develop their own initiatives for healthy eating and activity among congregation members. The curriculum was updated in January 2014 to include the latest nutrition content, as well as a social media and local-foods focus.
When it comes to food labels, Smith says, some people simply do not realize what they’re putting into their bodies. One woman, told by her doctor to lower her sodium intake, would buy low-sodium hot dogs and then add salt to flavor them. She didn’t realize that’s what sodium was.
But nutrition is not so much about labels as it is about choices. And one basic, life-altering choice is the one to pass up soda for water. New Covenant UMC is on the 1900 block of South Broad Street, an area where word about the dangers of too many soft drinks doesn’t necessarily filter down. Smith says that Faithful Families changed a lot of minds about what to drink. After a church picnic last year, in fact, organizers opened the drink coolers to find that the bottles of water were all gone, but there was plenty of soda left.
Small changes like swapping soda for water or a donut for fruit salad caught on quickly, Smith says. As did the activity portion of New Covenant’s program. Smith and others in the church have organized dances (which seniors in particular have turned out for with enthusiasm) and nature walks around the Hamilton-Trenton Marsh.
But Smith is concerned about the basic math at play here. The congregation has responded to the program well. But everyone has heard it, and Smith is aware that the program needs to expand in scope and in who it seeks to reach.
Smith has written the application for a third DOH grant that zeroes in more on the children instead of the adults. This approach follows one of the goals of the program as the state envisions it. Two years ago, when DOH Deputy Commissioner Arturo Brito announced funding for the program, he spoke of a focus on reducing obesity and improving health in minority communities in particular.
A focus on reducing childhood obesity and inactivity was a core idea of Brito’s presentation, and for Smith, this message has resonated as she prepares New Covenant for its more ambitious program. The key is getting through to the young.
“The kids need to buy into it too,” she says. “Not just the parents.”
Getting through to parents is not always as straightforward as it might appear, though. Part of Faithful Families involves classes in healthy cooking, such as stir-frying vegetables in light oils, rather than deep-frying battered foods. In one such session, Smith says, one mother insisted that her daughter detested vegetables. Smith convinced the woman to let her daughter try some stir-fry, and the woman was shocked to see the girl gobbling up a plateful of healthy food. Another mother encouraged her son to finish the tuna burger the church provided because they were going to McDonald’s for lunch.
Smith will not know whether New Covenant will get a new grant until the end of April. But if all goes well, the church will not be making a go of its 2015-16 program by itself. Part of Smith’s aim is to reach more people than just the congregation of New Covenant UMC. It’s to reach the broader community in general, and in a way that does not make people think new Covenant’s outreach is merely an attempt by a church to woo people to the fold.
New Covenant’s application this time includes a partnership with the Hamilton Area YMCA, which Smith says would be a satellite location for the church’s activities programs. This version of the program would focus on overweight and at-risk children and more education for parents to help them steer their children toward healthier eating and living.
Hamilton YMCA executive director Jill Makkay says her organization “is looking forward to working with the New Covenant United Methodist Church and their initiative to build healthier, happier families.” The program, titled “For The Health of It,” will engage children and parents in a curriculum that provides physical activity and a nutrition education program, to build a healthier community, she said.
Smith hopes this next incarnation of New Covenant’s healthy living program will draw more interest. The existing program has done well, but Smith confesses she “thought we’d be turning people away.” She attributes part of the reception to the fact that the programs are free and readily available, which, ironic as it may seem, tends to not engage people because they feel they can always get to it. She’s considering charging a fee of $7 to take part, which she hopes will get people to realize the value of what they’re learning.
After all, Smith says, this isn’t about getting people together to talk about sodium and soda pop. This is about living healthier every day and raising families who can make better choices throughout their lives.
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