Funding cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education — known as SNAP-Ed — from the federal bill known as “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law on July 4, will largely diminish how Yavapai County receives food and health education starting as soon as Tuesday, Sept. 30, when the grant cycle renews without SNAP-Ed funding.
Groups like the Community Health Education branch of community health services for Yavapai County and the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension work with schools and organizations across the county to provide health education services.
Services include, among other things, physical activity and nutrition education, particularly to schools and working adults around the county. Additionally, improving the built environment intending to allow residents more opportunities to be active.
Grants
“What we’ve been doing recently is notifying our partners,” said Heather Klomparens, the Yavapai County Community Health Education section manager.
The partners include Manzanita Outreach, a food assistance provider, the cooperative extension, and local organizations such as the Yavapai County Bicycle Advisory Committee.
“This grant is very centered on partners’ sustainability. It’s really, really important that it’s a collaborative effort.” Klomparens said she’s been working with the grant for 13 years.
The SNAP-Ed grant was on the larger grants, funding four part-time positions or two full-time positions. Community health has a total of eight grants assisting in its funding. There’s three different strategies the funding from the SNAP-Ed grant assisted: Active living, childhood and food systems.
Community Health Education organizes active learning, the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension addresses food systems, and they split childhood. Through Active Living efforts in the county, groups like the Bicycle Advisory Committee partners with Community Health Education to best serve participants.
Bicycling
In addition to the county, the BAC partners with the cities of Cottonwood, Clarkdale, volunteer groups such as the Verde Valley Cyclists Coalition and Wheel Fun, which is a group that helps build bike paths and trails around schools. “We’ve been the lead of that group for, I’d say, at least three to four years now,” Klomparens said. “And so what we’ve asked our partners is that someone else take the facilitation role.”
While the BAC works all year, National Bike Month, May, is when members are organizing most of their events. Bike month consisted of 12 events this year including Cottonwood’s Bike with the Mayor, Bike to School days and the Ride in Silence.
“We ride literally in silence throughout the city and town, in honor of those we have who have been killed or injured in traffic accidents,” BAC Chairwoman Jen Mabery said.
But all these events’ ultimate goals are to grow the community and help educate the public, and particularly lower income families, on the benefits of biking and active living.
“We’re present at so many different meetings, including the Verde Valley Transportation Planning Organization meetings, where we have a regular voice there on policies and initiatives going on,” Mabery said.
Events like the ones in bike month are put on by the BAC. When the funding changes take effect, the BAC will no longer be able to organize those events like members have in the past.
“We will really be leaning on our partners heavier, partners like the city or Wheel Fun, folks that we work with traditionally and still work with and will continue to work with,” Mabery said.
Community Health
How exactly Community Health’s role and the BAC will change is unclear until after the funding cuts begin later this month.
“I think one of the beautiful things about this grant is it is centered around community needs,” Klomparens said. “And it’s also centered around sustainability. So by involving the community, you also hopefully get sustainability along with that. … I think we’re just not ready to be not involved.”
The entire department for health education in the county is grant funded. The loss of funding for the SNAP-Ed grant makes it impossible for the branch to act in the same capacity as it has.
There are a variety of other grants it uses to support the work it does, but most of them don’t allow for nearly as broad efforts as the SNAP-Ed grant.
“We have a diabetes prevention program so that one, you have to be pre diabetic to be a participant,” Klomparens said. “It’s beautiful, but it’s narrowly focused.”
The SNAP-Ed grant allows them to be more broad with their efforts to help build relations and focus on sustainability, which is difficult when the other grants are so narrow.
“Through [SNAP-Ed], we work with local transportation authorities to improve the built environment, so sidewalks, bicycle lanes,” she said. “Oftentimes the whole grant is dedicated to advocating for populations that may not have the voice to advocate or know how to advocate for themselves.”
A large part of the SNAP-Ed grant specifically helps 16 schools around the county with is nutrition education in the school districts.
“We also work on school wellness committees to improve the overall health of the school,” Klomparens said. “So we partner with cafeteria managers, they’re the ones that make the decisions.”
Largely, Community Health Education works to advocate healthy options and improvements to school meals and has worked with five school gardens around the district.
“We do school wide taste tests from local farmers,” Klomparens said. “We, you know, talk about different policies that can be put into place to hopefully make the school a little bit better, health-wise. We work on procurement, so procuring local food.”
She said schools are tremendously busy and much of what community health helps with doesn’t have a replacement.
U of A Cooperative Extension
The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, which runs SNAP-Ed food systems in the county, stated in a Sept. 3 press release it reached more than 18,600 youths through direct and indirect education, who supported more than 145 partnerships with food pantries and feeding sites.
“While SNAP-Ed is ending, Cooperative Extension leaders are actively exploring alternative funding sources to sustain core elements of their community nutrition work,” the press release states. “Efforts are underway to identify new partnerships and grant opportunities, in collaboration with communities, that align with their mission to improve health and nutrition outcomes across Arizona.
“We will continue working in rural, urban and tribal communities alongside our partners to try and find alternative paths forward,” Director of the Community Nutrition Program Shea Cantu stated in the press release.
