About EFNEP
As a core Community Nutrition and Health statewide program, the California Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) provides community education classes for income-eligible youth and adults which promote nutrition and physical activity as a means of maintaining a healthy lifestyle free from chronic disease. By focusing on improving diet quality, increasing physical activity, assuring safe food-handling practices and strengthening food resource management skills, EFNEP supports families with children to make meaningful healthy lifestyle changes. EFNEP also partners with community stakeholders to make changes to the surrounding community context known as “policy, system, and environmental change efforts” which result in deeper, long-term positive impact for even more youth and families.
Mission of EFNEP
EFNEP is committed to engaging limited resource youth and adults to expand knowledge, skills, and attitudes, and adapt behavior as necessary to increase their consumption of nutritious foods, leading to an improved quality of life for the whole family. Participants experience benefits in four core areas:
- Diet Quality and Physical Activity—Increased healthy eating and overall physical well-being through the adoption of federal nutrition and physical activity recommendations.
- Food Resource Management—Increased ability to buy, grow, or otherwise appropriately obtain, prepare, and store food that meets federal nutrition recommendations.
- Food Safety—Adoption of best practices in household food safety and sanitation.
- Food Security—Increased ability to purchase food or obtain it from food assistance programs where necessary—to ensure having enough healthy food to eat.
Program participants can reflect on what they learn along the way during a series of six to nine lessons. This continuity supports participants to experience ongoing connection with each other as well as the lesson content, which boosts the knowledge, skills, and confidence they’ll attain to strengthen their healthy habits. From label reading and menu planning to making time for exercise, participants gain skills and an understanding about making healthy choices, in spite of many societal barriers, including having a limited household budget.
Adult participants are encouraged to include their children in safe food preparation and physical activity. Together, they can support each other to improve the entire family’s health and well-being.
See more details in our Impacts.
Focus on communities
EFNEP nutrition educators use evidence-based curriculum to deliver a series of nutrition education classes tailored to the needs of the communities in which they live.
EFNEP program staff develop strong partnerships with community organizations that serve low-income families, such as schools, food banks, immigrant outreach centers and health clinics. These partnerships support their role as trusted sources of information about nutrition and positive health practices.
Delivered through the Cooperative Extension system
EFNEP is federally funded by the United States Department of Agriculture as part of a long-standing network of community-based nutrition education programs across the country, by land-grant universities through the Cooperative Extension system. Since 1969, EFNEP has been funded as a permanent program with Smith-Lever 3(d) funds, a line item in the United States Farm Bill.
Evaluation data drives program improvements
EFNEP evaluation and reporting is entered through a national web-based reporting system called WebNEERS (Web-based Nutrition Education, Evaluation and Reporting System).
WebNEERS is used as a tool to improve the program at the county, state, and national level. The reporting system provides data on progress in outreach and enrollment, along with outcome data from pre- and post-evaluation tools that can be used by program educators, county units, the statewide team, or national leadership. This data helps drive short-term and long-term program quality and improvement goals and demonstrates EFNEP’s impact within local communities and statewide.