Sarada Eastham and Helen Mills from The Bridge Youth & Family Services Society spoke with us about recent developments in the Healthy Together program, including Healthy Together @ Home, a free online program they are currently offering on Thursday mornings that is accessible on a drop-in basis to individuals and groups across Canada.

The Healthy Together program is an innovative family education model for children (0-18 years) and their families to support healthy lifestyles. The program involves a series of age-based group learning sessions that focus on healthy eating, physical activity, and community engagement and offers children and their caregivers easy-to-use tools to support healthy lifestyle choices. Younger children participate along with their caregivers; older youth participate independently. The program can be adapted for a variety of audiences and incorporated into existing programming.

The program was developed in 2011 after initial 1 year funding was provided to The Bridge Youth & Family Services Society under the PHAC innovation strategy, ‘Achieving Healthier Weights in Canada’s Communities’.  The team at The Bridge, in consultation with a project National Advisory Committee, created and developed the program, which was piloted with 6 groups in Kelowna, BC.

Phase 2 provided additional funding to further expand the Healthy Together program, working with 25 organizations across Canada to implement and evaluate the program in their communities.  The resulting fine-tuning of the program led to the production of the new Healthy Together toolkit, launched in 2017.  The toolkit incorporated new resources and ‘bite-sized’ learning suited to drop-in programs.  Phase 2 led to 29 partner sites running the program across 8 provinces/territories.

In 2020, an online facilitator training program was launched, which gives Healthy Together greater reach and accessibility.  Facilitators have 6 months in which to complete the training, along with access to the digital program toolkit and resources.  The facilitator training takes 4-6 hours and provides the skills to run the program and adapt it to meet the needs of your own situation.

We spoke with Sarada Eastham, Project Manager for the Healthy Together Program at The Bridge Youth and Family Services Society in Kelowna, and her colleague, Helen Mills, who has been with the project for a number of years and who acts as technical facilitator for the new Healthy Together at Home (HT@Home) online program. Sarada has recently joined the program and, having worked with a number of other programs previously, she is impressed by the ‘legs’ of this program and how many components are comprised within the whole.  She is also very struck by the staff loyalty and continuity with the program.  She notes that its reputation precedes it.  People know about it and have a positive impression, especially in that the aim of the program is to support organizations and to provide a flexible asset that can be incorporated readily into existing structures.

Healthy Together is an evidence-based program, aligned with the Canada Food Guide and 24-Hr Movement Guidelines.  After the first three sessions, there is flexibility in the order of the sessions.  Agencies are able to plug in what works for them.  The program is adaptable to a variety of settings and has been used by community groups, schools, nurse programs, and multiple community service agencies. The program can be used by nutritionists, community group hubs, teachers, parents, or anyone working with parent or children.

Aims of the program include:

·       Increased physical activity and consumption of fruits and vegetables

·       Helping prevent type 2 diabetes, obesity and other chronic illnesses

·       Decreased screen time and consumption of sugary drinks

Every Healthy Together session includes 3 key components:

·       Learning Activity:  Over 30 learning activities cover topics including food, meal planning, budgeting, sleep, and movement guidelines.

·       Physical Activity:  More than 30 physical activities, with adaptations for all ages and abilities, and even consideration to space constraints.

·       Cooking Activity:  Over 30 simple, fun-to-cook recipes with full ingredient lists and directions.  Many can be prepared with limited cooking equipment.

Whilst the program is still part of and housed in the Bridge, it now has a separate identity within the whole.  The Bridge has been incredibly supportive to the program and the continuity of weekly sessions over previous years at The Bridge provided the base from which the program was able to successfully launch online early in the pandemic.

The new format, in response to the necessities of meeting during the pandemic, has been the Healthy Together @ Home online program run by experienced facilitators, one in Kelowna and one in New Brunswick.  Nathaniel, the New Brunswick coordinator, has worked for six years as a facilitator and was involved in the role out of the program first on the east coast and then nationally.  Helen co-facilitates.  She is the constant at every session, doing screen shares, answering questions, and supporting the program behind the scenes. 

Anyone across Canada can log in to the sessions, with participants sometime coming in as individuals/families, and sometimes a group of sign-ins together with a local facilitator.  The team wanted the tech aspect to be simple and open access.  Using the same Zoom login every week with a waiting room rather than a password has made it as easy as possible for people to access. There have been opportunities for relationship building, such as facilitators who have previously run the program joining in the online sessions to get ideas for how they too can support families in an online format. 

There are up to 400 participants in the Unplug and Play initiative, which will be highlighted during the week of 18-24 April, 2021, with a very special edition of HT@Home on Thursday, 22 April, 2021.

As more and more groups took on the program and adapted it for their needs, it became apparent that there was a need to develop a BC-specific program, which is one of the current focus areas for the team, exploring ways to deepen connections and develop the program within the province.

Another current development area, Sustainability Scholars, is focusing on immigrant support, enhancing literacy component, as well as nutrition and physical activity.  Issues specific to this group include accessibility, such as whether posters and other promotional material incorporate elements such as plain language and translation.

Having identified that, so far, most participant caregivers have been female, the team has been working on ways to make the program more accessible for male caregivers, and will soon be releasing a “Dad’s toolkit”.

The team produces a newsletter three times a year and their training material includes components to support agencies in their fund-raising for running the programs.

Sarada noted that a central pillar of the program is enhancing the relationships that really matter.  They have received lots of feedback from parents giving thanks from parents for the support the program provides for developing their relationship with their child in a non-judgmental setting, and the biggest test, “Parents keep coming back.”

To learn more about Healthy Together (HT) please visit: https://www.healthy-together.ca/