O29 Reach Characteristics and Predictors of Virtual Nutrition Education in a Florida SNAP-Ed Implementing Agency During COVID-19

A Case Study of Nutrition Educators' Perspectives on the Delivery of Virtual Community Nutrition Programming

“…A common limitation of many of these studies that looked at perceived interest and barriers has been that the samples lack racial and ethnic diversity and are comprised mostly of White female participants (Haynes-Maslow et al, 2019;Jewkes et al, 2021;Loehmer et al, 2018;Stotz et al, 2017). Saqib et al (2022) found that preferences in attending virtual or in-person education are influences by environmental and social factors and therefore a systems approach for analysis should be taken in research that compares the two delivery methods.…”

“…Previous scholarship highlighted that extension educators that wish to deliver programs online "should be prepared to use the following key resources: local media production resources, web lesson creation software, and an online data collection system" (Stosich et al, 2016) (Krall et al, 2015;Loehmer et al, 2018;Stotz et al, 2017;Swindle et al, 2014;Walker et al, 2021) and experimental design (Au et al, 2016;Bensley et al, 2011), this study took place during a time primarily focused on taking action to address immediate needs. Recently, more publications have been written that look at this period of rapid shift (Bahl et al, 2020;Gorcyxca et al, 2022;Hohlt, 2022;Saqib et al, 2022;Wong et al, 2022). In Southeastern State Extension, state-level staff and county educators worked both independently and together to create materials in a timely manner based on resources that they had available.…”

“…Outside of older adults, Patricia found that the Hispanic community she worked closely with responded much more positively to her in-person versus virtually. As noted by Saqib et al (2022), environmental and social factors can often predict the utilization of virtual or face-to-face program preferences. While virtual connected educators to new audiences it also missed some traditional audiences served in the past.…”