Food Safety in Your Home is a program of computer-based food safety lessons designed for one-on-one education in a participant's home. As participants respond to 19 food safety statements, they learn the 5 steps to ensuring food safety in their homes: chill foods promptly, cook foods to proper temperatures, keep hands and surfaces clean, store food safety, and separate foods to prevent cross-contamination.

This program has been successfully piloted with a variety of low-income audiences including Native American, Hispanic and African American participants and their families.

Thank you for your interest in this project!
For more information, contact us.

Teaching Food Safety in Your Home

Who is eligible for this program?

Participants must fulfill 3 criteria. They must be primary food preparers in their homes or have significant food preparation responsibilities for meals. They must handle and prepare meat, wild game, chicken or fish for their household at least once every month. Participants who do not handle or prepare meat for their household are not eligible to be enrolled in this evaluation project – you may use a ‘Guest’ account to review the food safety lesson with these learners. And they must be amenable to home visits from the educator.

How are visits structured?

Participants must be visited in their home, a shelter, or a half-way house where they have food preparation responsibility. Visiting learners at a community center is not appropriate for these lessons. Participants do not have to have children living in the household. It will take from 1 to 3 visits, usually 1 hour each, to enroll participants and to work through the 18 food safety behavior statements in the Food Safety in Your Home lesson. An additional follow-up visit to administer the evaluation post-test is also required.

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Begin by enrolling participants. Participants are to be visited individually in their homes. In order to track participant learning, the lessons must be delivered individually and not to a group. The lessons are available in English and in Spanish. You will track leaner demographics using the enrollment form.

Next, install the tool(s). Install the tool(s) on your laptop computer. Refer to installation instructions on the CD or contact us with questions.

Teach participants. Work through the 5 parts of the food safety lessons, noting visit details on the Enrollment Form. Share the home food safety tip sheet (English/Espanol) with learners as you move through the lessons. Remove the link through the title and use the language designation as the link.

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• Bi-metal dial stem meat thermometer (B109882, Miljoco Corp. 888-888-1498) Dial-stem thermometer-use instructions are available in English and in Spanish.

• Refrigerator/freezer thermometer (B9-122; Miljoco Corp. 888-888-1498

• Be sure to send visit data to the Database once the lesson is complete.
  

  
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Plan to visit participants in their home roughly 4-6 weeks after the food safety lesson(s) to administer the post-test (English/Espanol). Timing for the post-test will depend upon the frequency with which meat is handled and prepared in the household.

*From enrollment form

**Timing of the post-test must be spaced to allow learners to practice handling and preparing meat in their household.

Enter post-test data into the Database promptly.

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