The CHL Network Multistate Project (W2194) supports and extends the CHL network, training, intervention activities and research programs initiated through CHL and the CHL Center of Excellence.
This multistate project supports and extends the CHL network, training, intervention activities and research programs initiated through CHL, which has demonstrated feasibility of the approach. The land grant institutions held stakeholder meetings that resulted in the CHL application. Land grant colleges in the Pacific have been an organizing mechanism for CHL. This multistate project will continue to be an important mechanism to maintain a stable partnership and coordinated activity. Without this tool the group will need to rely on grant opportunities that are now smaller and will likely result in smaller less coordinated subsets of the partners working together. This project has the potential to model multistates as platforms for coordinated health extension coalitions to facilitate and support broad sector partnership for health.
The project is currently focused on healthy child snack recipes, and analyzing data from the EFNEP program across the region on (adult) dietary intake (Healthy Eating Index in particular), food security and food behavior.
Objectives
- To conduct research on food cost, local food availability, and local food consumption availability across jurisdictions.
- To review existing tools and develop valid tools, as needed, for estimating food security appropriate to the USAP jurisdictions.
- To evaluate, using appropriate methods, the impact of training program activities’ facilitated by CHL to address capacity in child health.
Methods
- To conduct research on food cost, local food availability, and local food consumption across jurisdictions. The CHLN team will utilize food cost survey data collected from across the USAP region to explore differences in local food cost and availability, specifically examining differences in costs based on the thrifty food plan (TFP) foods and supplemental foods that were identified as the foods most frequently consumed by children in the region. Differences will be compared across store types and jurisdictions.
- To review existing, and/or develop valid tools for estimating food security for the USAP jurisdictions. In the absence of Federal nutrition surveillance and significant USAP populations in the validation of standard food security questions utilized by programs such as EFNEP and BRFSS, the CHLN team will develop and validate questions that aim to understand food security in the context of environments where non-monetary exchanges of food occur (i.e., growing, gathering, fishing, hunting). The CHLN team will work with EFNEP programs in the region to pilot test the question and conduct key informant interviews with EFNEP staff and directors to understand how the food security questions are interpreted by EFNEP participants.
- To investigate appropriate tools to evaluate the CHL training program activities’ impact on the capacity to address child health. This research will also contribute to scholarship of teaching, informing teaching methodologies and impact of place-based open access training materials. The CHLN team conducts a number of training activities (i.e., research mentorship, assistantships to support individuals to pursue graduate training, curriculum development, and learning resource creation) that aim to address child health and nutrition. The team will work to develop appropriate tools that will be used to evaluate the impacts of these efforts in order to quantify the impact on the USAP region’s capacity to address child health. to include evaluation of the impact of innovative pedagogical methods (i.e. flipped classroom approach and integrated learning activities in Open Education Resource textbooks) on student learning of nutrition curriculum