BodyWorks in Wyoming Team Wins UW Extension Creative Excellence Award

Team members who launched a program that gets youths and parents working together to improve family eating and activity -- with one youth earning dinner at the White House -- received the University of Wyoming Extension Creative Excellence Recognition Award.                

BodyWorks in Wyoming program collaborators Melissa Bardsley, Vicki Hayman, Mary Louise Wood and Kimberly Fry received the honor during extension’s recent annual training in Riverton. The team developed the program to teach Wyoming youths and adults strategies to build lifelong healthy habits.

Bardsley is the extension food and nutrition specialist; Wood is the 4-H youth educator in Albany County; Hayman is the nutrition and food safety educator in Weston County; and Fry is a 4-H youth educator in Campbell County.

They have led the BodyWorks program since 2012 in Campbell and Albany counties -- with one 12-year-old participant, Dillon Andrews, of Albany County, garnering dinner at the White House after his recipe for Indian tacos (http://bit.ly/recipebydillon) was selected in the 2015 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge.

His mother says, “Before participating in BodyWorks, he would not have been able to identify the best ingredients to create such a balanced meal.”  

Youths attended the five-week program with a parent or grandparent, and the children prepared the meals served at each session. Laramie was one of three state pilot sites for the program initially developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Women’s Health.

The rate of overweight and obese Wyoming high school students increased from 17.4 percent in 2001 to 23.5 percent in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For more information, contact Wood at (307) 721-2571 or mwood8@uwyo.edu.