Beloved nutrition programs for low-income NYS residents set to end

Richard Kramarz, 77, of Bath, New York, hated chickpeas - the taste, the look, the consistency especially. So when educators for Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) made chickpea salad at a nutrition workshop and asked him to try it, he balked.

"At first I said, my God, I do not want this, I will not eat it," said Kramarz, a resident of the Clyde F. Simon Lakeview Apartments for low-income seniors, where a series of workshops are held every year as part of CCE Steuben County's Fruit and Vegetable Prescription (FVRx) Program. "They go, 'Just taste it.' So they gave me a little bit. It tasted so good, I went for more."

For Kramarz, that was the beginning of a turn toward healthier eating - now he's finishing his third year in the program and makes chickpea salad for himself four or five times a year. He's cut back his ice cream consumption to once a week (on Sunday nights) and uses the program's weekly $20 vouchers to buy mostly fruit (and some vegetables) at a local farmer's market that he said would be too expensive otherwise.

"Many of us do not eat healthy meals, we don't always like to cook for ourselves, and this helped me a lot," he said. "I was eating stuff that I normally don't eat or can't afford to buy, and I just love going to the meetings."

The FVRx program is one of many community nutrition initiatives under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program's (SNAP) education arm, known in New York as SNAP-Ed NY. Until now, it's been a federally funded effort implemented in New York by 10 county CCE offices, seven community organizations and three state agencies to help low-income residents stretch their dollars while improving diet and health, with CCE covering all of New York outside New York City. The program - which in 2024 reached more than 200,000 residents through direct workshops and more than 750,000 through systemic changes - educates individuals while reducing barriers to healthy foods in communities. Its educators determine where there's need and operate accordingly: working in schools and hospitals, senior living facilities and work-readiness programs, food pantries and more.

Funding for SNAP-Ed was stripped from the federal budget on July 4, and the majority of SNAP-Ed programs across the state will end in the coming months.

"SNAP-Ed is our largest nutrition education investment to support healthy lifestyle behaviors for low-resource families and communities - this is a huge loss," said Angela Odoms-Young, the Nancy Schlegel Meinig Associate Professor of Maternal and Child Nutrition in the College of Human Ecology and critical issue lead for human nutrition, food safety and security and obesity prevention for CCE.

Odoms-Young said the program - started in the 1990s as a complement to SNAP benefits, or food stamps - is aimed at promoting healthy eating habits and physical activity for those who are SNAP-eligible, to prevent obesity and improve health outcomes and quality of life, while also saving health care costs. Six in 10 Americans suffer from a chronic disease, the majority of which can be prevented through better diet.

"The benefit of SNAP-Ed is that when people learn nutrition techniques and strategies they can incorporate into their daily life, they continue doing those strategies even when they cycle off SNAP," Odoms-Young said. "As Cornell, as extension, these programs help us work collaboratively with communities to make sure the lives of people in New York state are better, that residents know more and can do more."

Last year, more than 50% of workshop participants reported changing their long-term eating habits, and educators implemented nearly 300 initiatives to improve policies and systems. Almost half of workshop participants were between the ages of 5 and 17, with 41% of the programming occurring in schools - with the hope that getting kids excited about healthy food will keep them healthy into the future.

Jennifer Chagoya of Middletown, New York has already seen a lasting impact on her 12 year-old daughter, who still talks about a SNAP-Ed program, Market Sprouts, she took part in two years ago, even calling it the "best thing she's ever done" through her school. Chagoya's 10 year-old son went through the program this summer and now voluntarily eats vegetables, and helps plan the weekly grocery list.

"It's just had such a significant, positive impact on both of them," said Chagoya, who works in the Enlarged City School District of Middletown. "We have a really high population of students who are economically disadvantaged, and I think this has been really invaluable for helping these kids bring skills back home."

Meeting communities, building communities

In explaining why SNAP-Ed is an essential complement to SNAP benefits, Shayna Russo, SNAP-Ed educator for the Hudson Valley region (CCE Orange County), as well as coordinator of statewide SNAP-Ed efforts, gives the example of a butternut squash.

"You give someone a butternut squash, but they may not be able to cut it, store it - they may not know what to do with it," Russo said. "Just because you have the components, doesn't mean you have the tools, resources and means, the capacity to turn that into something that is nutritious and ready to eat."

SNAP-Ed fills that gap, Russo said, and crucially meets the community where they are - both literally, by holding sessions where they live, study and work and in terms of addressing specific needs and obstacles.

"Each one of our community agencies delivers programs that are unique to the communities they serve," she said. "That means looking at people's environment and what they have available."

SNAP-Ed educators have worked with corner stores in food deserts to stock and feature produce and healthy options; they've concocted recipes from ingredients bought solely from a dollar store; they've demoed recipes for healthy meals made entirely from canned goods or the foods available from food banks. Multiple initiatives, like the FVRx programs, help people access fresh fruits and vegetables, through vouchers, delivery services or farm-to-school programs, and educators work with school cafeterias to identify healthy meals that kids will actually eat.

In Erie County, CCE educators offer classes in a manufacturing and technology career readiness program offered by Goodwill, where some of the participants are food insecure and have reported going weeks without eating a fruit or vegetable.

Alex Sanker, a career coach in the readiness program, said the workshops are "a very good eye-opener for a lot of people…You want to make sure you have things in your stomach that will benefit you so you can last throughout the workday, and so you won't mess anything up in terms of your internal health."

Zahrine Bajwa, regional program director for CCE Suffolk County, said the programming is particularly impactful for immigrant families and communities, who have to adjust to what's available in a new culture. She gave the example of fast food, which is scarce in many other countries but is ubiquitous in the U.S.

"It's so cheap, it's easy to buy that for your children instead of preparing a meal," she said.

In the last five years, CCE educators and partners have achieved unprecedented coordination across the state; a silver lining of the pandemic was that SNAP-Ed educators banded together to create a suite of digital resources - a unified website and social media presence, for example - that now complement in-person programming. Post-pandemic, the relationships and collaboration stuck.

"The power of the group statewide to come together to recognize the strength of our communities, their cultures and connections and how resourceful they are, and to see so many people come together to support the community - it's phenomenal," Russo said.

Snap-Ed New York funds the equivalent of 200 full-time employees across the state, with 150 of those position equivalents in CCE.

"My biggest success has been my team, my educators, because they're the face of the program," said Bajwa, who commended their contributions. "Each lesson, each class had value built in…you are giving people that critical thinking that, yes, your health, what you put in your mouth, is important. That is why this program is tremendous because, at the end of the day, the people whose lives we touched are changed forever."