The Children’s Healthy Living Network (CHLN) Multistate project continues to support and expand the partnerships, training, intervention activities, and research programs established through the CHL Program across the Pacific region, where childhood obesity, diabetes, and food insecurity remain significant concerns. The Multistate provides an important mechanism for Pacific states and territories to maintain a stable partnership and coordinate research, training, extension, and community engagement activities focused on child and community health. The renewed project will assess the long-term effectiveness of previous CHL efforts; work with communities to develop culturally responsive approaches for intervention design, workforce development, and food system capacity building; and expand CHLN research to additional stages of childhood and strengthen the Pacific food composition database with local and traditional foods. These coordinated activities will provide researchers, community leaders, health and education professionals, and families with improved data, tools, and strategies to support healthy eating and active living. Without the Multistate structure, partners would be more dependent on individual grant opportunities that may result in smaller and less coordinated efforts. Maintaining CHLN will strengthen regional capacity, support resilient food systems, and promote sustainable improvements in the health of Pacific children and communities.
Objectives
- By the end of Year 5, assess the long-term effectiveness of CHL-initiated training and intervention activities through two coordinated multistate research studies.
- By the end of Year 5, co-develop an integrated culturally responsive model for intervention design, workforce development, and capacity building that draw upon influential drivers identified through CHL and CHLN.
- By the end of Year 5, broaden and strengthen the CHL Network’s applied research infrastructure by (a) expanding activities to include additional critical developmental stages in childhood, and (b) increasing the Pacific regional food composition database to include at least 5 additional local and traditional foods.
This multistate project continues to support and extend the CHL network’s training, intervention activities and research programs initiated through CHL, which has demonstrated feasibility of the approach. The land grant institutions held community meetings that resulted in the CHL application. The community engagement process included over 900 community members that included parents, teachers, and community leaders; who identified the need for environmental interventions that address six key behavioral outcomes that became the six CHL target behaviors (Fialkwoski, 2013). The priorities and intervention strategies remain relevant as evidenced by sustained CHL interventions and partner programs. This multistate project has continued to be an important mechanism that maintains the stable partnership and coordinated activities and has facilitated the expansion to include Arizona and West Virginia partners. These partners bring a wealth of new resources and interventions that can be adapted for our region and CHL interventions can be adapted to inform strategies to promote child health in Arizon and West Virginia communities as well. Without this multistate 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.
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.
This multistate project will support and extend the CHL network, training, intervention activities and research programs initiated through CHL, which has demonstrate feasability 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.
Objectives
- Adapt and disseminate CHL child obesity policy, systems and environmentally focused multi-level prevention training and social marketing materials for the Pacific region.
- Facilitate use of CHL data, findings related to child obesity and its multilevel (policy, system, and environmental) determinants.
- Promote partnership and coalition building and strengthening in and among Pacific communities and the region around child health.
- Build and sustain a child health and nutrition monitoring system in the Pacific.