Adapting plant-based education during COVID-19
How Nurse Eugenia's nutrition workshop has reached more families than ever
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Overview
Eugenia Soliterman, affectionately known as Nurse Eugenia, is a family nurse practitioner who created The Whole-Foods, Plant-Based Diets Bootcamp Series to support her patients suffering from chronic and preventable illnesses. But, when the COVID crisis began, Nurse Eugenia’s classes and events were suddenly canceled, including a screening of Forks Over Knives followed by a screening of a film featuring Dr. Michael Greger discussing his book, How Not to Diet.
What did she do? She chose to adapt!
In fact, the online version of the series has exceeded expectations and now has the potential to help more people than ever.
The community that Nurse Eugenia serves is in a neighborhood of The Bronx with one of the lowest socioeconomic statuses and some of the worst health outcomes in New York. In fact, 90–95% of Eugenia’s patients receive some form of government assistance. In addition to food security issues and lack of access to whole foods, this community experiences extremely high rates of type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, high cholesterol, heart disease, and other preventable illnesses.
Nurse Eugenia is on the medical board at Plant Powered Metro New York, a network that connects and empowers local communities through whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) nutrition. She had been sharing information about WFPB diets with patients during one-on-one visits when she realized that they needed more from her than she could offer at individual appointments.
She knew that group settings work well for her colleagues Dr. Ostfeld at Montefiore Medical Center (also a VegFund grantee) and Dr. McMacken at Bellevue Hospital. So, she created The Whole-Foods, Plant-Based Diets Bootcamp Series, a program of educational workshops discussing the benefits of a WFPB diet.
The combination of a medical provider teaching nutrition education for specific chronic conditions, pediatric specific, weight-loss specific, and cooking classes with free, delicious, and healthy food made for enough of a draw for members of the community to consistently attend. For a population of 99% non-vegan or vegetarian, each attendee is an opportunity to introduce the plant-based lifestyle.
Eugenia Soliterman, MPH, MSN, FNP-BC
Goals
- Engage with 100 to 200 families and provide plant-based nutrition information to adults and children in the underserved neighborhoods of the Bronx.
- Demonstrate that eating a WFPB diet can halt and reverse chronic disease, prevent many types of cancer, and improve mind and body health.
- Share information about the environmental benefits of a WFPB diet.
- Provide practical tools for transitioning to an affordable and sustainable WFPB diet.
- Empower participants to demand more WFPB options in their local grocery stores.
50+
classes offered
95
people reached in the first 3 months
99%
non-vegan audience
Approach
Nurse Eugenia used her VegFund grant to cover food and cooking costs, recipes, and starter guides (from the Plantrician Project). As a nurse practitioner, Eugenia is involved throughout the lifespan of her patients. So, the workshop topics include transitions to plant-based diets for every life stage from childhood to older adulthood. Other topics include Plant-Based 101, Plant-Based for Diabetics, Plant-Based for People with Cardiac Risks, Eating Out, Discussing Plant-Based Eating with Friends and Relatives, and Starting Plant-Based Organizations. Eugenia also hosts weekly meetings to address questions submitted by individuals. Since COVID-19 social distancing measures have put constraints on in-person classes, she’s introduced Zoom classes on topics such as Eating to Boost Your Immunity, Ordering Healthy Takeout, and How to Build a Healthy Pantry.
Pivoting during the COVID Crisis
When COVID-19 hit New York City, Nurse Eugenia was a week away from hosting her first film screening of Forks Over Knives. She had a full month of programming planned, including a screening of a film featuring Dr. Michael Greger discussing his book, How Not to Diet. For everyone’s safety, Eugenia postponed for a few months while she transferred the entire series to the Zoom platform.
Major challenges of transitioning to Zoom
- Not all patients had access to Zoom.
- Some patient contact information was outdated.
The solutions
- She called hundreds of patients to identify who was interested and could access Zoom.
- She started a text message campaign to reach people more efficiently.
Through the transition, Nurse Eugenia discovered that class attendance is potentially much higher when you remove the limiting factors of meeting space and commuting. Although the technology is indeed a hurdle for some folks, the convenience of attending classes from the comfort of home overcomes many barriers for others. Reaching patients to alert them about upcoming events was still a problem. Her solution? An outreach plan that includes a text campaign.
How the text campaign works
Nurse Eugenia uses a tool called TextMagic. With this tool, she invites large groups of people to a class via text (usually 200 to 300 people). Next, she texts those interested to confirm that they’re registered (about 30 to 50 people). She sends reminder texts on the morning of and five minutes before the class starts. After the class, she sends a link to a summary document. If it is a cooking class (which typically attracts 15 to 25 people), she’ll also share the recipes featured. Since the start of the text campaigns in late June/early July, she has sent a total of 9,179 texts.
With a text message campaign, you can:
- Confirm that recipients have:
- working phone numbers
- internet access
- ability/interest to engage (text back a “Y” or “N”)
- Send strategic reminders for upcoming events
- Attach helpful resources and materials to follow up after an event
Top Tip
Setbacks may require pivoting and extra planning, but the solutions you come up with can lead to surprising results. In the process of going virtual during the COVID crisis, many activists are discovering that attendance surpasses expectations. Give online events a try if you haven’t yet, and, like Nurse Eugenia, think about how you might promote your event to reach those most in need.
Results
Nurse Eugenia has hosted more than 50 workshops with impressive attendance. In the first two months, she reached 52 families, and during the slowdown caused by COVID-19 the following month, she reached an additional 35 families. That’s a total of 87 families (95 individuals) attending in just the first three months. This means that she accomplished 87% of her original goal in 50% of her 6-month plan! As a result, Nurse Eugenia raised her target goal for the next three months from 100 families to 200. She’s already identified 1,000 folks who desperately need high-quality nutrition information to help with their preventable illnesses.
As of early November, a total of 180 families have attended, representing 237 individuals. Families who attend typically consist of mothers and children and/or mothers and grandmothers. Each person has the potential to influence four to six family members at home.
If, in such a short period of time, one person can reach so many, imagine what we can accomplish when more plant-based health professionals launch similar projects! We can learn a lot from Nurse Eugenia’s experience.
Tips from Nurse Eugenia
- Live cooking classes are a huge hit. They show people alternatives to cooking with meat, oil, and dairy. Cooking classes also reveal what you eat, which people are curious about.
- Offer multiple ways for people to interact with the information: images, texts, video, summaries. People have various learning styles, and repetition helps the information sink in.
- Know your audience! Surveys (including polls on Zoom) can provide insights. Don’t miss out on asking “why” when people aren’t interested in attending (time of day, language barriers, subject matter, etc.) so that you can address the concerns for future events.
- Be open to learning from others. According to Eugenia, questions and insights from attendees have enriched the class experience. She tries not to go more than five minutes without presenting a question to the audience or otherwise engaging attendees in some way.
Meet them where they are, but don't sugar-coat information about the benefits of plant-based diets, either. For example, when someone tells me that they will never stop eating cheese, I say that of course I would never force anything. However, I wouldn't exclude also providing information about how dairy is connected to heart disease, diabetes, and various cancers just because they have said they're not budging on the topic. Most cases, the first step they take may be to lessen their consumption. It's been a fun surprise to see how many people slowly lessen or exclude all-together after feeling energy, GI, and weight benefits from just reducing the dose of the harmful foods.
Eugenia Soliterman, MPH, MSN, FNP-BC
Recommended reading:
The Rapid Growth of Maryland Vegan Restaurant Week
Supporting Communities of Color through Plant-Based Nutrition
Surviving and Thriving During a Pandemic
What’s Next
The Whole-Foods, Plant-Based Diets Bootcamp Series has already exceeded the original goal of reaching 100 families and has the potential to make an impact on her community. The Bronx population needs information about WFPB diets now more than ever.
Text campaigns are in the works to promote upcoming events. Nurse Eugenia has plans to reach out to local Bronx papers for event coverage. Currently, she is seeking funding to hire a Spanish-speaking nutritionist and health coach to join her efforts. It’s exciting to witness this growing plant-based health advocacy movement.