On February 23, 2023, the Children’s Healthy Living (CHL) program held its first Local Advisory Council (LAC) meeting for the CHL Food Systems (CHL FS) project to map drivers of the food system that impact children’s health. Committee members primarily consisted of those who attended the previous Group Model Building (GMB) workshops and have expertise in the Hawaiʻi food system as it relates to children’s health and the foods that children in Hawaiʻi eat. The two-and-a-half hour meeting held at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) reviewed the CHL FS project, the conceptual causal loop diagram (CLD) developed at the GMB workshops, actions and ideas aimed at interventions within the food system, the CHL FS Request For Proposals (RFP), and the CHL FS Trainee program.
The GMB process is a regionally focused system dynamics approach aimed at ultimately developing a data driven simulation model to identify drivers of resilience that exist within our food system and their relationship with childhood food and nutrition security, healthful diets, and health. Reviewing and revising the CLD is a recurring step in this process, along with the agenda item of generating actions and ideas for implementing activities that are likely to improve what young children eat in Hawai’i. The LAC members were prompted to reflect on potential activities and network with the potential next step of applying for the CHL FS RFP. CHL will be seeking to further engage community partners through providing support for pilot projects to address issues around the food system and what children eat.
The LAC meetings are part of the CHL FS project, a 5-year Agriculture and Food Research Initiative – Sustainable Agricultural Systems (AFRI SAS) grant funded by USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Similar LAC meetings will continue to be conducted in Hawaiʻi, along with the partner jurisdictions of Alaska, American Samoa, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).