Midwest Dairy was proud to offer a new essential resource for rural healthcare providers in the Fall of 2023. Rural health providers understand the importance of nutrition in the rural health landscape, but they often lack the resources and time to address this issue alone. To support this need, Midwest Dairy launched the Smart Moo-ve Healthy All Day Long health initiative to assist with this challenge and help bridge the nutrition gap in rural communities.
This free and easy-to-use downloadable toolkit was developed with healthcare partners for National Rural Health Day and is tailored for primary and pediatric care professionals. The toolkit helps these pediatric care professionals discuss the importance of nutrition – including dairy – with their patients and communities. It features the USDA MyPlate nutrition guidelines and dairy’s essential role in childhood growth and development. This toolkit includes patient handouts, waiting room visuals, posters, and TV monitor slides to help educate families on dairy’s nutritional value during their doctor’s office visits. Additionally, the toolkit contains children’s entertainment tools such as a storybook, activity pages, and character trading cards that make dairy nutrition fun to learn about.
The resources were shared with key stakeholders such as state offices of rural health, rural healthcare organizations, WIC, Extension programs, pediatric professional organizations, and others serving rural areas within our 10-state region.
Farmers were encouraged to amplify this effort by sharing the toolkit with their own local healthcare providers as well. A significant milestone for the project was achieved when the nation’s leading rural health information source, the Rural Health Information Hub, promoted the toolkit in their November newsletter and posted a link to it in their website’s resources section. This extended the toolkit’s reach and credibility and added visibility to rural communities nationwide.
Connecting positive dairy nutrition messages with animated characters children love is just a one-way checkoff in bringing dairy nutrition to parents and children, and this toolkit is complete with children’s entertainment tools such as a storybook, activity pages, and character trading cards. This comprehensive toolkit serves as an invaluable resource to educate families about nourishing brains, bones, and bodies with an emphasis on dairy nutrition. Midwest Dairy aims to continue offering this toolkit to healthcare providers in the future.