About Us

CHL is a partnership among remote Pacific states and other jurisdictions of the US: Alaska, American Samoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Federated States of Micronesia, Hawaii, Republic of Palau, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. All jurisdictions have US Land Grant Colleges, which have united in the Pacific Land Grant Alliance (PLGA).

We are combining efforts to:

• train a public health nutrition work force
• conduct public health nutrition research
• develop a food, nutrition, and physical activity data management and evaluation system
• communicate nutrition and health related information to the public

With no US National Nutrition monitoring (e.g, NHANES) in these jurisdictions, not even in the states Alaska and Hawaii, the information we attain through CHL will guide future children’s obesity prevention programs and policies.

The goal of this Food and Agricultural Science Enhancement (FASE) Coordinated Agricultural Program (CAP) among Pacific Region USDA-defined Experimental Program for Stimulating Competitive Research (EPSCoR) states/jurisdictions is to build social/cultural, physical/built, and political/economic environments that will promote active play and intake of healthy food to prevent young child obesity in the Pacific Region. To do this, CHL will engage the community, and focus on capacity building and sustainable environmental change. CHL will serve as a model for other regions with remote underserved Native populations at risk for obesity.

The CHL Center of Excellence continues to build capacity in a partnership among 11 jurisdictions of the US Affiliated Pacific – to provide training, research and extension/outreach to maintain and extend the CHL network, examine long-term effects of the multilevel CHL intervention and provide access to best practices in policy, systems and environmental approaches for prevention of child obesity. 

 CHL Center aims to:

1) Increase the number of educators, practitioners, and researchers who receive the training and effectively model behviors 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 to continue to monitor Pacific child obesity and related behaviors and environments and provide information for program and policy guidance to prevent child obesity.

FOOD SYSTEM RESILIENCY FOR CHILDREN’S HEALTHY LIVING (CHL FOOD SYSTEM) is a five-year United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) grant to develop a CHL Food Systems model.

Our goal is to use systems dynamics research methods in an integrated approach to develop a CHL Food Systems Model and 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, in order to prevent chronic disease in households and communities across the US Affiliated Pacific insular area (Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Am. Samoa) which will be used to guide education and extension programs.

Objectives are to 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 Program Steering Committee was established in 2011 and is composed of distinguished members representing CHL regions. The PSC was entrusted with the responsibility of formulating and overseeing CHL scientific and administrative procedures, directives, and internal communication.

PSC Members