This nutrition education program, called Journey to Health, hinged on collaboration with the Wellness Bus, the University of Utah Center for Community Nutrition, and the Utah Food Bank. The Wellness Bus is a mobile health unit that offers free screenings for health indicators like cholesterol and blood sugar, as well as one-on-one health coaching. With Journey to Health, the team wanted to help the bus expand its services and reach new community members.

“It started out as little food demos,” French says. “Dietitians would make smoothies and snacks outside the Wellness Bus and talk to clients about their nutritional value. People would be like, ‘Oh, what’s this?’” Seeing that initial interest, French and Alex Hernandez, MS, RDN, program manager for the Wellness Bus, started designing classes built around culinary demonstrations as graduate students in nutrition. The two continued to work on the program together after they graduated and were hired as dietitians at the U.

Their curriculum included recipes like corn-and-bean salsa and cucumber-mint agua fresca to show how healthy eating could fit into participants’ cultural cuisines. More than half of people who participated in the program were Hispanic or Latinx, and the team wanted to ensure that Journey to Health’s recipes would work well with participants’ existing cooking styles. “Healthy eating should include your cultural foods and your favorite foods,” French says. “It’s important that we include variety and practice moderation, but all food fits in a healthy diet, and it’s important to honor that.”

The Journey to Health program also aimed to reduce the economic barriers that limit many people’s access to healthy ingredients. Most Journey to Health activities included incentives that helped people get healthy food, from samples of the culinary demonstrations to grocery store gift cards.