Active Transportation Term Guide

The Monterey County Health Department, through its Planning, Evaluation, and Policy (PEP) Department, is dedicated to promoting health equity by implementing strategic plans, aligning performance standards with national accreditation, and addressing social and environmental policies. Serving underserved and unincorporated communities, PEP focuses on overcoming language barriers in Monterey County, which has a significant Hispanic and Latino population. This project aimed to develop a bilingual glossary of active transportation terms to enhance communication between the community and government agencies. Implemented over three to six months, the glossary was piloted for feedback and updates. The project successfully identified key transportation terms and acronyms that needed translation. The term guide enhanced the understanding of common active transportation terms and their role in community improvement. Recommendations for the next steps include expanding the glossary to cover more terms and languages, conducting regular community feedback sessions, creating similar glossaries for other public service areas, and increasing outreach efforts to ensure community awareness and access

Obesity: Influencing Behavioral Consumption Through Meal Kit Distribution

Founded in 2002, Everyone’s Harvest is a grassroots nonprofit dedicated to providing access to healthy, affordable fruits and vegetables through certified farmers markets and community food programs. Its key initiatives—Fresh Rx, Market Match, Edible Education and Farms Together —focus on alleviating nutrition insecurity and combating diet-related health conditions by providing vulnerable populations the resources to purchase, or receive, fresh produce and gain nutritional knowledge. This study explores a new intervention: the distribution of farmers\u27 market meal kits as a complementary strategy to the current Edible Education program. These meal kits, which feature seasonally available produce and pre-measured ingredients, aim to strengthen participants\u27 cooking skills and promote healthier eating habits at home. Using a stratified sampling approach, the study compares the behavioral outcomes of participants who receive either a voucher or meal kit. Surveys will gather data on participants\u27 comfort with cooking the provided recipes and their likelihood of preparing meals at home. Initial findings indicate that meal kits not only improve participants\u27 ability to prepare healthy meals, but also provide greater value for money, enabling the creation of more balanced meals than vouchers alone. The meal kit intervention shows promise as an effective strategy for improving health outcomes in vulnerable communities, particularly in combating the rising rates of obesity and diet-related health issues in Monterey County. This research offers valuable insights into the potential of meal kits as a sustainable solution for enhancing diet quality in populations who are socioeconomically disadvantaged

Parenting with Grace

Parents are often caught off guard by the upheaval of adding children to their lives. Feelings of guilt, shame, isolation, and depression can arise when parents are faced with the demands and stressors that come along with having children. Studies have shown that children who have distressed parents endure lasting negative outcomes that can extend into the primary school years (Mihelic et al., 2018). Educating parents and giving them some awareness about what to expect can make a real difference. To have these conversations, I created a two-part parenting workshop for new parents at Parents’ Place in Pacific Grove, CA. The workshop provided a foundation for the parenting journey, highlighting important components of parenting, emotional triggers, self-care practices, and grounding techniques. In addition, some basic tools were discussed to manage this life change and to work on “parenting with grace.” Grace for themselves and grace for their children

Examining The Effects of Externally Mounted Biologgers On At-Sea Behavior And Reproductive Success In Adult Female Northern Elephant Seals, Mirounga Angustirostris, Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Over the past five decades, biologgers have been used to study animal behavior, physiology, and ecology. Externally mounted biologgers may have unforeseen effects on behavior, habitat use, foraging success, and reproductive success. Although guidelines exist for the recommended mass of biologgers on terrestrial animals, these guidelines are inappropriate for marine animals, which are more affected by buoyancy and drag. However, drag is difficult to measure directly necessitating the use of proxies based on physical characteristics of biologgers like frontal area. Northern elephant seals are a model species for studying the impacts of biologgers due to an existing long-term dataset collected using numerous types of biologgers. I used Computational Fluid Dynamics to simulate drag from 26 multi-biologger configurations and evaluated biologger characteristics to identify a drag proxy. I determined that the frontal surface area of the head and back-mounted biologgers were the most predictive characteristics for added drag. Analysis of 18 years of data from northern elephant seals at Año Nuevo State Park using these proxies revealed negligible effects of biologger-associated drag on dive behavior during both foraging trips, with only a small amount of variation explained by the frontal area of the biologgers. Postmolt seals with larger biologgers performed marginally shallower dives with departure mass-dependent impacts to drift dive frequency. In contrast, post-breeding seals performed slightly shorter dives, resulting in shorter bottom times in response to increased drag. They also exhibited a small increase in foraging trip duration. However, these behavioral changes are within the normal range of behaviors for northern elephant seals, and no long-term effects were identified

Conquering Fears as a First-Generation Hispanic College Student

Applying to college can be a daunting task, especially for first-generation students like the ones at Seaside High School (SHS). Research from the National Center for Education Statistics highlights this challenge: while 54% of students whose parents completed high school enrolled in college immediately after graduation, only 36% of students whose parents did not finish high school made that transition (Balemian & Feng, 2013). These students often face barriers like financial strain, limited awareness of available support programs, and the pressure of navigating higher education independently. Recognizing these challenges is key to expanding access to opportunities. In response, I developed two workshops specifically designed to guide students through the financial resources needed for college and provide essential information for navigating the college journey. These sessions were offered at Seaside High School to support students as they take this important step toward their future

Diversity Coordinator Training

The Restorative Justice Program in The Schools is an agency that helps students, facilities and family members resolve conflict in a restorative method and helps them understand the result of their actions. Historically, students of color continue to have a higher suspension rate than white students. Providing coordinators with answers to help students with their questions about race and ethnicity in the schools can help eliminate students\u27 own misunderstandings that contribute to disputes that result in suspensions. The contributing factors are minimal parental engagement and implicit bias and discriminatory practices. The consequences include academic achievement gap and increased drop out risk. The project\u27s purpose is to provide a comprehensive workshop training for RJP school coordinators to have conversations with students about race and ethnicity so students will be able to engage in the conversation. The most important findings were that the school coordinators needed guidance on the topic of race and ethnicity and were more comfortable speaking about ethnicity rather than race. After the workshop training their confidence increased about the topic. It is recommended that the workshop training continues to be implemented and be updated every academic year

Teaching First Graders About Emotional Self-Regulation

This project focused on increasing the emotion regulation skills of six to seven-year-olds. Emotion regulation is “a person’s ability to effectively manage and respond to an emotional experience” (Rolston & Lloyd-Richardson, n.d.). In other words, it is when a person understands their emotions, is capable of controlling them, and has appropriate responses to the events that caused them. Emotion regulation is difficult for children, it is specifically difficult for children who are learning to adjust to school. School is a new environment that can cause children to feel strong emotions that they have not felt before, therefore making it challenging to regulate their emotions. Young children have difficulty understanding what they are feeling and how to deal with feelings without help from adults, the purpose of my project was to help them do it on their own. Emotional self-regulation is important in the classroom for students to succeed. It can have effects on their academic performance, mental health, substance abuse later in life, and their relationships with their peers and teachers (Shivaji, 2016). There were a total of three workshops, approximately thirty minutes each. The first lesson focused on teaching children about six emotions and how they can identify them in others and themselves through body language. The second lesson focused on mindfulness exercises they can do on their own to regulate their emotions. The third lesson focused on how they can get help from others, who they can ask for help, and how they can express their emotions best. The workshops were held at Oasis Charter Public School in Salinas, California

The Need for Mental Health Resources in Migrant Farm Working Families

The focus of my capstone project is on providing mental health resources for migrant workers and their families. Language barriers and cultural differences are a big obstacle for these parents. Because of this, it is hard for parents to seek help. Language barriers can make communicating one’s struggles with healthcare providers difficult. These topics can be difficult for anyone to put into words, but it’s especially challenging for those who may not speak the same language as the healthcare professional. Per my experience cultural and language barriers are a big obstacle these families face. This could be because they can often face discrimination, they are scared of there’re legal status and they lack the support of their family. My main focus for this capstone is to provide services and support mental health within the immigrant community. There is a need for delivering mental health information and resources to migrant farmworkers and show them positive coping skills so they can better their mental health. To help inform migrant farm working families about mental health disorders and resources around their community that are free for everyone. Due to this I created a one-hour workshop at a MSHS in Salinas, CA that caters to migrant seasonal farm worker families who have preschool age children

Building Paths to Housing Stability

Too many individuals in Monterey experience homelessness. My project was addressing how individuals transition from homelessness to housing. Community Health Engagement (CHE) is a non-profit agency under CSU Monterey Bay of Health Sciences and Human Services (CHE, 2024). It offers outreach, referrals, groups and housing navigation to residents of Monterey County. The goal for this project was for individuals to develop skills and knowledge regarding being responsible with their stable home and being responsible with any bills. It was accomplished by providing written materials with tips. Of the 13 respondents nine of the individuals read the materials after it was given to them. The brochure was given along with the interview questions to know how to spread the information to other individuals in the community and have a stable home. The recommendation is for the next steps would be to provide support and resources on affordable housing options that can help individuals to overcome their barriers to financial stability and being responsible with their home

Increasing Head Start Parents\u27 Awareness about Kindergarten Readiness

Kindergarten is important for children because this is where they start to be prepared socially, emotionally and cognitively to reach their full potential at school. Many of the children in the USA are not prepared for kindergarten and this is something that can be prevented if their parents engage in at home activities. This activities help prepare their children for kindergarten. This project focused on informing Migrant Head Start parents of ways they can support their children’s development to achieve kindergarten readiness. Kindergarten readiness helps children make the transition to school be smooth and positive. Parents need mentorship and guidance to help their children be ready for kindergarten in different areas of their development. The main areas of development I educated parents on so they can help their child achieve kindergarten readiness were cognitive and linguistic development