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and health professionals to address this issue. Onlineeducation provides an efficient way to reach practitionerswho don’t have time or resources for travel. PreventingChildhood Obesity: An Ecological Approach is a six-week course offered as part of the Cornell Nutrition-Works online professional development program. Basedon Green and Kreuter’s PRECEDE-PROCEED model,the course helps participants assess and prioritize localfactors related to childhood obesity and develop an ac-tion plan for community intervention. A facilitator in-teracts with participants throughout the course. Twenty-two professionals participated in the course’s first sessionin Fall 2006; additional sessions are planned for 2007.Evaluation results showed improved knowledge, skills,confidence, and intended behavior. For example, afterthe course, 84% of participants (compared to 10% pre-course) felt confident in their ability to develop effectivecommunity collaborations to support healthy eating andactive living, 95% (versus 10% pre-course) felt confidentin their ability to identify appropriate interventionmethods, and 100% (versus 24%) felt confident in theirability to develop an action plan for addressing excessiveweight gain in children in their communities. In addi-tion, 95% intend to apply what they learned to theirwork, and 74% intend to implement at least part of theirspecific action plan. This project is funded by USDA’sCSREES and Cornell University.

P69 Nutrition and Cooking on a Budget:Skills for Low-Income WomenAnne Bennett, MPH, RD, 7000 East Belleview Avenue,Suite 301, Greenwood Village, CO 80111,abennett@tchd.org; Amanda Gersabeck, RD, 4201 East72nd Avenue, Commerce City, CO 80022,agersabe@tchd.org; Ruth Stemler, Share Our Strength,4105 East Florida Avenue, Suite 105, Denver, CO 80222,rstemler@ofl.org

To help low-income families get the most nutrition out ofa limited budget, Tri-County Health Department and Op-eration Frontline partnered to create a unique opportunityto teach nutrition and cooking skills. Thirteen participantsfrom Tri-County’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Pro-gram for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) programattended a series of six classes taught by a volunteer pro-fessional chef and a WIC registered dietitian. Participantscompleted hands-on food preparation while learning abouthealthy food choices, label reading, cooking techniques andbudgeting skills. Each participant received a bag of groceriesat the end of each session as well as a notebook with recipesand nutrition tips. The collaboration between the WICprogram and Operation Frontline was evaluated using a pre-and post-test and the results were positive. All participants

reported increasing their intake of vegetables and there wasan 82% increase in the number of participants who thoughtof healthy food choices when feeding their families. Thenumber of participants who include a variety of foods whenmaking meals increased by 86%. Participants who compareprices increased 30% and there was a 24% decrease in howoften participants run out of money for food. When grad-uates come to WIC, they mention they are reading labelsand using what they learned with their families. The grad-uates are more inquisitive about nutrition during their visitsand are more interested in coming to other WIC classes.This project was funded through a Thriving CommunitiesGrant.

P70 Increased Self-Efficacy and DairyConsumption Resulting From a DairyCurriculum for Junior High School StudentsErin Dawson, MFCS, RD, School of Family & ConsumerSciences, Bowling Green State University, Johnston Hall,Bowling Green, OH 43403, erin_d167@yahoo.com;Christine Haar, MS, RD, Bowling Green StateUniversity, chaar@bgnet.bgsu.edu; Rebecca Pobocik, PhD,RD, Bowling Green State University, pobocik@bgsu.edu;Priscilla Coleman, PhD, Bowling Green State University,pcolema@bgsu.edu; Karen Bakies, RD, Dairy Council MidEast, 5950 Sharon Woods Boulevard, Columbus, OH43229, karen.bakies@drink-milk.com; M Sue Houston,PhD, RD, Bowling Green State University,shousto@bgsu.edu

Less than one third of adolescents meet the national rec-ommendations for dairy and calcium intake. A curriculumfor junior high school students focused on dairy nutritionwas developed and presented during regularly scheduledclasses. The intervention, taught by a dietitian, consisted offive lessons based on Social Cognitive Theory. A conve-nience sample of 63 seventh and eighth graders were as-signed to control (n � 18) and intervention groups (n �45) by class period. A three (baseline, post-test, follow-up)by two (control verses treatment) mixed analysis of vari-ance was conducted to see if the intervention was associ-ated with increased self-efficacy immediately after the in-tervention and one month later. The multivariateinteraction between time of measurement and interventionwas significant, F (2, 50) � 8.68, p � .001, supporting theresearch objective to increase self efficacy. The treatmentgroup scores improved while the control group scores re-mained the same. Pearson correlation coefficients wereconducted to examine self-efficacy scores at the threepoints of assessment and self-reported consumption of var-ious dairy foods. Self efficacy scores at the post assessmentwere significantly correlated with milk consumption at thepost assessment (r � .31, p� .05) and with milk (p � .31,

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Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior ● Volume 39, Number 4, July/August 2007 Supplement S131