Family and Consumer Sciences

Addressing Community Needs Via Sessions, Conferences, and Workshops

Kids getting on busCooperative Extension is a nationwide, non-credit educational network. Each U.S. state and territory has a state office at its land-grant university and a network of local or regional offices.

The vision of the Tennessee State University Cooperative Extension Program is to be leader in outreach educational programs.

Family and Consumer Sciences

  •  Child Development – addresses physical, social, emotional, and intellectual aspects of children and adolescents
  • Parenting – teaches effective communication and parenting skills
  • Grandparents and Relative Caregivers – targets grandparents and other relatives caring for children
  • Nutrition Education and Food Safety – helps individuals acquire knowledge, skills and behavior changes necessary to maintain nutritionally sound, safe diets.
  • Health Education – addresses individual and community health issues and promotes healthy living
  • Gerontology – highlights factors related to the aging population

Using a variety of program delivery strategies, we offer practical and useful research-based programs, resources, and publications in agriculture and natural resource, family and consumer sciences, 4-H youth development, and community resources and economic development.

Specialists on the main campus and county extension agents conduct education sessions, conferences, and workshops to address community needs.

TSU Cooperative Extension is entering a new partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiated by the ECOP Health Innovation Task Force to address vaccination hesitancy around COVID and other adult immunizations. The program is designed to help increase connections and communication between the community and health care practices, as well as increase accessibility and acceptability of local vaccination clinics and opportunities with the goal to mobilize communities to implement public health programs to reduce health disparities, especially in rural areas.   

Through our data assessment of the underserved population, we have identified 3 counties (Davidson, Shelby, and Haywood) to focus our immunization education. Counties were chosen to reach African American communities experiencing disparities in access and hesitancy to accept the vaccine due to historical and ongoing trauma. The project uses social marketing and social media platforms to encourage vaccine acceptance, specifically targeting each community using local people to provide encouragement and messaging.

With the support of stakeholders, the project allows the CDC and the Cooperative Extension System to address health disparities among rural, diverse, and other underserved communities by facilitating discussions at the community level to address barriers and concerns about COVID-19, flu, and other adult vaccinations









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