On Thursday, September 26, 2024, the CNMI CHL Food Systems project (CHL FS) held its second Local Advisory Council (LAC) meeting in Saipan, led by the Northern Marianas College Cooperative Research, Extension, and Education Services.
A collaborative effort between various government agencies, including the Commonwealth Healthcare Corporation, CNMI Nutrition Assistance Program, Public School System (PSS) Child Nutrition Program, PSS Head Start program, Kagman Agricultural Farms and Producers Association, and Kalayaan Inc., the Committee met to discuss efforts to improve the health conditions of children ages 2 to 8 in the CNMI. Hearing from a CNMI CHL Food Systems Trainee, they also sat down to provide feedback for their research proposal and further updates on the CHL FS Grant, Pilot Project, Food Waste Project, and LAC Project.
The CNMI CHL Food Systems Trainee, Hannah Isabel Shai, joined the meeting virtually to share her dissertation proposal updates and progress. The overall objective of her dissertation is to explore the determinants of child beverage consumption in the NMI, including individual, cultural, environmental and economic, and sociopolitical. She shared her 3 research objectives, which are to (1) Examine the characteristics of water and SSB consumption among CNMI children in the CHL study, (2) Examine differences in food environment characteristics assessed by CHL among CNMI villages varying in SSB consumption, and (3) Examine the multi-determinant influences of beverage consumption among CNMI households with children, including the prevalence of water security indicators and perceptions of policy factors. Hannah is scheduled to propose her dissertation and advance to PhD candidacy at the end of November. She will then return to Saipan in 2025 to begin the implementation of her research.
