Spur's health education and lifelong food solutions (SHELFS) began by CO-creating a public health intervention program that is driven by local community preferences and community participatory…

The Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded Colorado State University $1 million on June 15, 2026, under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI, CFDA 10.310) to develop and pilot the Health Education and Lifelong Food Solutions (SHELFS) program, a community-driven public health intervention designed to increase consumption of nutrient-dense whole foods and reduce ultra-processed food intake in high-disease-burden populations.

SHELFS integrates culinary arts with medical, nutrition, and agricultural sciences through teaching kitchens co-located in the Globeville-Elyria-Swansea communities of Denver County, Colorado. The program operates as an academic-community partnership between Colorado State University's SPUR campus and Tepeyac Community Health Center, a nonprofit serving the same geographic area. The intervention targets households in food deserts, combining dietary education and behavior-change training with co-promoted physical activity and mindfulness activities. Early pilot data showed increased total dietary fiber consumption and reduced intake of ultra-processed foods. The program emphasizes building food-health curiosity across household members—both children and adults—drawing on prior human clinical trials demonstrating that increased whole grain and legume consumption supports chronic disease control and prevention across the lifespan.

Performance occurs in Fort Collins, Colorado. The award period runs through June 14, 2030. This is a project grant, the assistance type under AFRI.

Spur's health education and lifelong food solutions (SHELFS) began by CO-creating a public health intervention program that is driven by local community preferences and community participatory expertise. SHELFS focus is to increase consumption of healthy nutrient-dense whole foods, and the program pilot has shown to increase total dietary fiber and reduce intake of ultra-processed foods, while CO-promoting physicaland mindfulness activities.SHELFS is an academic-community partnership developing sustainable food-health programming for reducing chronic disease. DR. Ryan has conducted multiple human clinical dietary intervention trials that provide compelling support for increasing daily consumption ofwhole grains and legumesfor chronic disease control and prevention across the lifespan.teaching kitchens available for this project are used for benefiting communities residing in food deserts and with high chronic disease burdens. SHELFS is interdisciplinary by connecting culinary arts to medical, nutrition and agricultural sciences and promotes healthy dietary behaviors while empowering individuals and communities to take active roles in managing their health. The globeville-elyria-swansea (GES) communities of denver county live around the new colorado state university (CSU) spur campus (https://csuspur.ORG) and we work together as neighbors for sustainable intervention solutions with integrated CSU research and CSU extension capacity. Collaboration with tepeyac community health center, a non-profit community health center CO-located in the GES community, is an intentional and coordinated partnership for the shared goal of reducing chronic disease rates and risks in GES households.households must be educated, trained, and empowered to implement behavior changes that support increased fiber and nutrient intake with whole foods. We seek to build curiosity about food-health connections among both children and adults in the same household, and CO-created interventions with rigor for testing using human subjects research protocols.a 2023 community needs assessments conducted by the tepeyac community health center partner (and subaward for this proposal) supports that nutritional security warrants immediate attention alongside strategies to mitigate rising chronic disease rates, namely the rise in T2D diabetes, and our recently completed community readiness assessment for research in GES supports this program project activities and objectives (manuscript in preparation).our SHELFS team led more than ten community-driven ideation events and established the stage of GES community readiness to adopt these solutions with research that will aid household scale reduction of chronic disease risk. The overarching goalof SHELFS is to increase consumption of whole grains and legumes across the lifespan while reducing upfs for chronic disease control and prevention in GES households.three specific aims guide the public health intervention to control and prevent CHR, onic disease in households residing in GES, denver county, colorado. The program approach includes nutrition education that facilitates voluntary adoption of food choices and health-related behaviors conducive to lifelong health and well-being using evidence based whole grains and legumes as additions to freshly prepared meals/snacks and while reducing ultra-processed food intakes to prevent and control diet-related chronic diseases.