On March 13th, as part of the Children’s Healthy Living Sustainable Food Systems grant project (CHL FS), the Alaska Jurisdiction held its second Local Advisory Council (LAC) meeting. The hour and a half zoom meeting was coordinated by Amelia Sikes, the Alaska coordinator who co-hosted with the Alaska Lead and Co-I, Leslie Shallcross. At this LAC meeting the Alaska team updated five council members on CHL activities including the progress and current activities of the Alaska trainee Jennifer Galbreath. They also updated members on the Alaska Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) and presented the new regional model which is based on CLDs developed last year at group model building workshops which were held in five CHL jurisdictions across the pacific. New LAC members from the Anchorage Parks Foundation (APF) presented on their school gardens program, Youth Outdoors (YO), which CHL has awarded $20,000 for them to plan as part of the CHL FS education and outreach pilot project program. The council members from APF, the Anchorage school district and the state Department of Health were able to give feedback on the model, the pilot program as well as the CHL Signature Foods project through an activity where they discussed important local and culturally significant foods to Alaska. This meeting provided a valuable opportunity to network and there were great discussions around documenting child health-related programs in Alaska, new approaches to school lunch programs and considerations for healthy food advocacy.
