Common Threads

Common Threads is a national nonprofit that supports food as medicine. We inspire communities to embrace healthy cooking, healthy eating and the celebration of culture by providing children, families and educators with hands-on cooking and nutrition education classes. Common Threads aspires to reach every community through the power of cooking and food as medicine.

Stephanie Folkens, the Vice President of Programs and Evaluation at Common Threads, plays a critical role in leading the organization's overall strategy and external partnerships across ten different geographical regions. With a focus on leveraging collective strengths and magnifying impact, Stephanie oversees program delivery and grant-making efforts, serving over 110,000 individuals annually.

In addition, Stephanie is responsible for program design and innovation, incorporating insights from program evaluation, community interests, and trends in education and community health. She manages a team of 20 individuals, including eight direct reports, and maintains relationships with decision-makers across the United States, implementing programs for more than 300 schools and community organizations.

As part of her role, Stephanie defines and upholds grant-making strategy and requirements, investing approximately $1 million annually in school and community-based nutrition grants. She has also sustained $2.3 million in government contracts and earned revenue, ensuring program quality and compliance. With her leadership and expertise, Stephanie is instrumental in advancing Common Threads' mission to improve health outcomes in underserved communities through nutrition education and cooking skills.

Common Threads is committed to providing strong support for our Leap fellows throughout the duration of the 12-week Project sprint. To ensure their success, our Program and Evaluation Leadership Team, consisting of several members, will work closely with team lead, Stephanie Folkens, to provide guidance and management to the fellows. Regular meetings with both the team lead and senior-level staff members will be scheduled to establish and track progress towards goals. Additionally, fellows will have access to all relevant research documents to help them better understand the infrastructure of our TEACH Portal, as well as access to the backend of our LMS, Skilljar. These resources and support systems will help to ensure that our Leap fellows are equipped with the tools and knowledge they need to thrive in their roles and make meaningful contributions to Common Threads.

Analyzing Common Threads' online training and curriculum effectiveness, usage, and appeal to users.

Common Threads is passionate about sharing our programs with others but do not currently have the capacity to ensure that we are offering a robust experience for users on our learning platform, the TEACH portal. Currently, the TEACH Portal allows us to utilize a train-the-educator model where educators can receive training on our Small Bites student nutrition education program and receive the curriculum for implementation in their own communities. Our LMS provider, Skilljar, has a multitude of ways to engage users; however our limited staff capacity has prevented us from expanding our TEACH Portal to its fullest potential. 

We are eager to tell the story of our users and essentially determine the factors that influence a teacher's choice of Common Threads' online training and curriculum over other evidence-based nutrition curriculum options. While we have the means to offer interactive and engaging experiences to users, we do not know to what extent the role of user demographics, prior learning preferences, and prioritization of student health plays in a teachers’ decision. Not having this information makes it hard to ensure that we are continually improving our programs and reaching measurable outcomes. 

Additionally, we’d like to learn how effective Common Threads' online training is in improving the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of students who receive training and curriculum through the learning management system.

Our learning approach focuses on enhancing the nutrition education experience within our online platform by effectively showcasing a myriad of ways for users to engage. Our evidence-based program, Small Bites, not only teaches students beneficial nutritional content but each lesson engages students in a hands-on snack making activity. In addition to the snack making that engages kinesthetic learners, we have a variety of other ways that incorporate multiple learning styles. Some examples are our Kitchen Times articles that present students with printable magazine-style one to two-pagers that delve into essential nutrition education concepts. We also integrate videos, catering to both auditory and visual learners, while reinforcing content and illustrating nutrient-rich recipes. Furthermore, our platform fosters movement and facilitates peer-to-peer learning, as students collaborate in groups while creating the recipes. These are just a few examples of the multifaceted learning modalities we offer.

While we have a manageable system in place for users to engage with our lessons and training, we also recognize the need for empirical research to identify the most effective methods among our current offerings. Acquiring this knowledge will enable us to evolve and expand our programs based on sound research findings, while remaining attuned to the needs and preferences of our users. This comprehensive solution empowers us to engage with the right audience and provide a user experience that is not only enriching but also encourages users to share their meaningful experiences within their communities.

Based on the Social Ecological Model for Nutrition Education (Contento I.  Nutrition Education: Linking Research, Theory and Practice, ISBN-13: 978-1284078008) and an abstract accepted for presentation at Society of Nutrition Education and Behavior meeting July 2017 (Roth, A et al.  Small Bites, Big Change! Teacher-facilitated Nutrition Program Increases Healthy Eating Knowledge and Vegetable Consumption), our evidence-based Small Bites nutrition education program was accepted into the National Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) Toolkit for use by SNAP-Ed Implementing Agencies, nation-wide. (https://snapedtoolkit.org/interventions/programs/common-threads-small-bites-program/)

More recently, Common Threads completed a three-year analysis of survey data from participants of our Small Bites program. Our Research and Evaluation team aggregated survey data from 2017-2020 and matched pre- and post-survey responses, totaling a sample size of 2,661 participants. With this sample size, the confidence, reliability and validity of results improve. However, results were consistent with previous analyses that had smaller sample sizes, which is a testament to the accuracy of methods used by Common Threads.  For this three year analysis, we found statistically significant improvements in a variety of measures as outlined below. After programming:

• 47% of students improved their liking for vegetables;

• 34% of students improved their consumption of whole grains;

• 45% of students improved their nutrition knowledge;

• 41% of students improved their cooking skills;

• 45% of students improved their consumption of vegetables;

• 29% of students improved communication with their family about healthy eating.

Since our founding, Common Threads has become a trusted student wellness leader in every school district we serve, and a subject-matter expert recognized by government, nonprofit, and health industry leaders. The inclusion of our Small Bites nutrition education curriculum and our flagship Cooking Skills and World Cuisine program in the SNAP-Ed Toolkit gives us credibility when we work with school districts, community organizations, and local and state municipalities to propose the addition of our curriculum. Notably, Common Threads has been successful in securing multi-year SNAP-Ed grants in New York City, Erie, and throughout Texas, allowing us to scale and sustain our work across these communities. The number of students reached by the intervention from 2012-2021 totals 339,000 students. Since 2015, Common Threads collected site-based data and has worked with 2,600+ sites. In 2020, our successful SNAP-Ed programming paved the way for Common Threads to receive a USDA Farm to School award, allowing us to pilot sourcing local ingredients from urban gardens and surrounding farms for select schools in Chicago, an initiative that we hope to expand to additional cities in future years.

Strengthening the evidence base for Common Threads’ solution will guide strategic decision making for the future of online teacher training from Common Threads. Common Threads has a suite of evidenced-based programs that it is directly implementing. However, given the popularity of the program, Common Threads is regularly fielding requests for training and access to the curriculum from other providers. Common Threads would like to strengthen our evidence based around the online training to better understand the impact scaling our programs would have on students participating in our programs without the direct supervision of Common Threads. We are also interested in learning about the factors that contribute to the teacher’s motivation to complete the training and implement the program to ensure that quality and fidelity to our evidenced-based programs continues.

1. What factors influence a teacher’s decision to choose Common Threads’ online training & curriculum over other evidence-based nutrition curriculum options?

2. What are the motivating factors that drive teachers to complete Common Threads’ online training, and how do these factors differ based on user demographics, learning preferences, and prioritization of student health

3. Does the training make a measurable difference in the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of students receiving the curriculum, and if so, how do these differences compare to Common Threads’ existing body of research?

Overall, the outputs from the fellows will provide key insights that can drive the way Common Threads make decisions about the future direction of the the platform and how to ensure it scales in such a way that students experience knowledge, attitude, and behavior change around healthy eating even if they are not directly receiving the program from Common Threads.

Potential outputs could include:

1. Create a summary report based on fellow-conducted user interviews to understand the motivations of teachers that decided to use the TEACH portal

2. Generate 2-3 short case studies illustrating the impact that the TEACH portal can have in communities where Common Threads does not offer direct service. These would in turn be used for internal education to help team members understand what programs look like outside of core markets as well as externally to help prospective partners (e.g. school districts) and funders understand the various experiences of teachers using the TEACH portal.

3. Provide recommendations on how to set-up the TEACH portal platform to continue monitoring performance over time. For example, recommending Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) that Common Threads should track on the portal to monitor impact and know when adjustments to the platform should be made.

The LEAP fellows' solutions will help inform Common Threads' strategic decision-making for the TEACH portal. Analyzing factors that influence teacher motivation and program fidelity can ensure effectiveness and knowledge, attitude, and behavior change. The analysis will also optimize the TEACH portal to better meet the needs of the target audience, driving more meaningful outcomes. These insights will drive the future direction of the TEACH portal, ensuring the most effective and impactful programs and help our team to understand more of the users pain points and learn about what we can do to sustain and grow the platform. 

Overall, the findings from the LEAP Project will help Common Threads to learn about the efficacy of our TEACH Portal and whether it makes sense to dedicate more, less, or the same amount of time and resources into growing the platform.

• Short:  Our short-term outcome is that we will be able to allocate our time and resources appropriately to create a richer experience for users. We also look forward to the organizations’ internal learning and comfort speaking about the growth of the TEACH portal, as we are historically a direct service company. Learning about our users’ experience would help us to learn about how effective our current offerings are and how we can improve. 

• Long: The long- term outcome is that the knowledge gained and outputs from the project in the form of summary report, case studies and recommendations  will enable Common Threads to make informed decisions around scaling our evidenced based programs through online training and curriculum.