FamilyCook Research Projects

We conduct our research with our university partners to identify the most effective aspects and strategies inherent in our programs, and we use this information to continually improve them. We welcome projects and partners who seek to collaborate with us to attempt to build the evidence base in the challenging area of obesity prevention.

We currently have ongoing research for the following programs:

Look Who's Cooking

Jr./Teen Iron Chef

Our most recent program evaluation of Look Who's Cooking involves our curriculum intervention as part of the Connecticut Department of Public Health's Food & Fitness project administered by Community Health Center over the 2008-09 school year. While some of the schools continue the FamilyCook program, now, beyond the funding period, and new ones are coming on board in the state, the next round of research will begin once the results from this project are available. The project evaluation research is currently in the analysis stage by the Consultation Center at Yale University.  A full report is expected in late fall '09. An older report is available from our Rochester, NY YMCA project.

Regarding Jr./Teen Iron Chef, the 2009-10 marks our 3rd year of program evaluation research as part of our collaboration with Urban Assembly public middle and high schools in NYC.  Our report from 2007-08, with details about methodology etc, can be downloaded here. An article based on these promising results and strategies is currently pending peer-review publication acceptance.  This research is a robust collaboration with valued FamilyCook partners:

• Albert Einstein College of Medicine - Dr. Judith Wylie-Rosett,
• Columbia's Institute of Human Nutrition - Thesis Mentor Program
• Gateway Institute - research funder for 2007-2008.

As we begin our 3rd year of evaluation, we anticipate  a large sample size of program schools, owing to our new collaboration with 50 HealthCorps schools.

We are also exploring a Community Based Participatory Research project for Teen Iron Chef with AECOM, HealthCorps and others. This is only in the preliminary stages. We will report our progress here in the coming months.

We invite you to return for updates or join our mailing list to be sure to receive news about the CT report and other FamilyCook research updates.