Tisa Hill
Extension Associate
2009
HENutrSciWeb Bio Page
Current Activities
Current Professional Activities
Currently, I coordiante the Collaboration for Health, Activity, and Nutrition in Children’s Environments (CHANCE), a pilot project of the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) in New York State, serving low-income families. CHANCE promotes healthy eating and active play among children aged 3-11 years by working with parents and other adults who influence children and shape the environments where children live, learn, and play. During these early years, parents and care-givers are especially important role models and lifelong habits are developed. Healthy diets and physical fitness are linked to better social and physical development and improved health throughout life. To “give kids a CHANCE” to reap the benefits of healthy lifestyles, we’re developing and testing innovative ways to prevent childhood overweight by targeting key behaviors and environmental factors. CHANCE uses a two-part approach: supporting families’ efforts to eat well and be active, and collaborating with communities to promote healthy changes in children’s environments.
Current Extension Activities
I coordiate the CHANCE project, described in more detail above.
Biography
Biographical Statement
After graduating from the University of Michigan with a major in Women's Studies, I returned to Lexington, Kentucky where I spent two years working for a consulting firm focused on facilitating democracy in action. To this end, our projects ranged from supporting commnity-wide dialogues on race relations to yearly community feedback processes sponsored by the Mayor's Office. In Oregon, I spent two years in the Americorps program, first as a VISTA and then as a member of RARE. My first year I worked on various projects providing mentoring to youth. My second year I led a long-term visioning process for a two county Senior and Disabilities Services program. During the past several years my work has focused on preventing unhealthy weight gain in children through a Cooperative Extension program providing parenting and nutrition education to low-income parents and creating community level environmental changes to make healthy choices easier for low-income children and their families.
Education
Women's Studies, University of Michigan, BA, 1994
Community Health Promotion, Oregon State University, MPH, 2005
Keywords
Public Health, obesity, parenting, childhood obesity, ecological model, translational research