Our Work

Goal: provide analytic services and access to nutrition related data, predominantly on children and their communities.  Data are available, according to privacy guidelines, for students, researchers, and collaborative partners. The CHL Data Center maintains datasets on child diet, food, physical activity, anthropometry and the food environment, from Hawaii, Alaska, American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau.

Services: review of research requests, consultation on developing new and sound methods for designing and analyzing studies in basic, translational, community and clinical trial research, and assisting with analyses for grant development or manuscript preparation. For sustainability of the CHL Data Center, not-for-profit fees are applied for these services. Cost for UH and non-UH investigators – data requests are $1,000 per request and consultation or analytic support are $125 per hour. 

Vision: prevent chronic disease in households and communities through a systems dynamic approach across the US Affiliated Pacific insular area.

Mission: to use systems dynamics research methods in an integrated approach to develop a CHL Food Systems Model.

Goal:  develops simulations to identify and test drivers of resiliency in food supply chains for decreasing food wastage and increasing food and nutrition security, healthful dietary patterns, and healthy body size among children, which will be used to guide education and extension programs.

Objectives 
1. Develop and test a System Dynamics stakeholder-driven transdisciplinary multilevel food and nutrition security resiliency model.
2. Provide graduate training to future leaders from the US Affiliated Pacific Region in food and nutrition security model development.
3. Incorporate Model key results and tools into extension and other community programs with online access to simulation tools on the CHL website to guide multilevel systems change.

The CHL Center of Excellence grant is a renewal of the CHL Program for Remote Underserved Minority Populations of the Pacific Coordinated Agricultural Program (CAP) in the National Institute for Food and Agriculture Child Obesity initiative.

The vision of the CHL program is to prevent young child obesity by fostering a health-promoting environment in remote underserved Native populations in the Pacific.

The mission is to elevate the capacity of the region, in partnership with our communities, to build and sustain a healthy food and physical environment to help maintain healthy weight and prevent obesity among young children in the region.

The goal is to facilitate the development of and support for social/cultural, political/economic, and physical/built environments that enable behaviors to promote health in the Region by addressing young child obesity prevention through training, research, and outreach.

CHL Center Objectives:
1) Increase the number of educators, practitioners, and researchers who receive the training and effectively
model behaviors necessary to address the complex problem of childhood obesity prevention through further development and
enhancement of CHL training programs, including the CHL Summer Institute and Certificate Program in underserved Pacific
populations.

2) Test the long term impact (6 year) of the CHL integrated multilevel policy systems and environmentally focused
community intervention on child behaviors, obesity and related functional outcomes in underserved Pacific populations.

3) Further build and maintain the CHL Center of Excellence that will continue to monitor Pacific child obesity and
related behaviors and environments, to provide information for program and policy guidance to prevent child obesity.

CHL Center reaches an extremely underserved rural population that is among the highest risk in the world for obesity. The rural region includes Alaska, Hawai‘i, Guam, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and the Freely Associated States (FAS), which comprises Federated States of Micronesia (FSM- Kosrae State, Yap State, Pohnpei State, Chuuk State), the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and Palau; the FAS is in “free association” with the US, politically and economically.

The region is vast and isolated from the US mainland, populated predominantly by Pacific Islanders. The land and water of the Pacific area covered by CHL is larger than the land mass of the continental US leaving Pacific Island populations separated by thousands of miles of ocean, while in Alaska the expanse is land without roads. The region has become strongly and rapidly influenced by western lifestyle and military activity, as evidenced by the primary food systems being reliant on food imports. Yet the region has few trained nutrition professionals. The region remains culturally and biologically distinct, with native languages, customs, and fragile biodiverse ecosystems that remain critical for achieving sustainable healthy living and prevention of obesity.

US Land Grant Colleges of the Pacific Region united to represent their stakeholders and create the Children’s Healthy Living Program for Remote Underserved Minority Populations of the Pacific (CHL) among Researchers, Instructors and Extension Specialists and Agents, each representing their stakeholders’ needs. Our partnership is maintained through the CHL Program Steering Committee (PSC), with stakeholders from each jurisdiction. The land grant college network we have leveraged and maintained is unparalleled in the region, for stability and sustained coordination. CHL’s reach has multiplied through jurisdiction coalitions; the increasing number of individuals that receive CHL training; and incorporation of CHL methodologies into programs and agencies.