PORT ST. LUCIE — Indian River State College Libraries — with support from the Florida Department of Health in St. Lucie County — will utilize their new Charlie Cart Kitchen to offer free hands-on cooking classes to area residents and students. In addition to the nutrition classes, anyone with a St. Lucie County Library card may check out a variety of kitchen and gardening tools and gadgets to expand their skills at home while adapting new healthy habits in 2024 and having fun. Additionally, the January Wellness Challenge, from January 8-31, is a fun and free initiative to kick off these expanded health literacy services and earn prizes along the way.

A new series of one-hour nutrition education classes will be offered each month in 2024. Each series will target a specific population. In January, the first series will utilize the evidence-based CREATE curriculum. These classes are geared towards adults and offer a flexible approach towards learning how to build healthy meals using readily available ingredients. The first series runs from January 22-25 at 12:30 p.m. There is no charge for the classes, but registration is required: https://irsc.libguides.com/healthliteracy/events.

The Health Hub is IRSC Libraries’ newest lending library to put kitchen and gardening tools in the hands of local residents and College students. This initiative follows the success of the 2022 Libraries with Heart launch. In partnership with the American Heart Association the program loaned area residents blood pressure monitor kits for two weeks at a time and provided access to educational videos, logs and local referral information for those needing assistance with hypertension. The Health Hub builds on this goal of making it easy and fun to increase healthy habits by offering kits that don’t require participants to invest in expensive tools and equipment.

The kits include appliances or tools, books and resources that help users have fun growing things in the kitchen or on the back patio. Available kits are listed at https://irsc.libguides.com/healthhub and may be checked out starting January 8. Smoothie lovers will enjoy the BlendCrafters Collection kit. Stir Fry Sensations offers a bounty of tools and resources for preparing quick and healthy dinners. Freezer Feast Essentials will help those wishing to save time and money by meal-prepping for the week and freezing the meals. There are even kits geared towards young families to make exploring outdoors even more fun.

These programs were designed to address the needs outlined in the St. Lucie County Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) 2021-2026. A goal of this plan is to increase the proportion of adults and children who are at a healthy weight. IRSC libraries has been a proud partner in this effort by hosting nutrition education classes at multiple campuses taught by health educators from the Florida Department of Health in St. Lucie County as well as the Treasure Coast Food Bank. This effort expands this outreach and increases opportunities for more people to take healthy steps toward a healthier weight. The investment of $34,500 to fund these health literacy services acknowledges that each person’s health journey is unique, but that most will find something that helps them meet their individual health goals for 2024.

The January Wellness Challenge, from January 8-31, is a fun and free initiative to kick off these expanded health literacy services and earn prizes along the way. It also is a great way for members of the community to familiarize themselves with the healthy living tools and classes available at the library. Visit https://irsc.libguides.com/healthliteracy to register today.