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May 2016 Newsletter

Omaha Gives! is May 25
On Wednesday, May 25, the Center will join many other Omaha-area nonprofits in a 24-hour online charitable challenge called Omaha Gives. From midnight to midnight, anyone can use a credit card to donate $10 or more to the Center (and other nonprofits) at omahagives24.org. Because participating nonprofits have the opportunity to earn prize money, donor gifts go further during this 24-hour period.
 
Help us spread the word – and please consider making a donation on May 25.
If you would like to schedule your donation in advance, click here.
Two News Faces Join Center Team
The Center has hired two new staff members recently – Somi Singh as intern and Kelli Gruber, MPH, as research associate.
Somi Singh is a biology major at Creighton University, working on a double minor in public health and health administration. She intends to begin her master's in clinical anatomy this fall followed by medical school. As a Center intern, she will be primarily focusing on off-site data collection for the Child Hunger Ends Here-Omaha Plan project. She will be administering surveys in food pantries and libraries. 
 
She was born in India and moved to the U.S. (specifically, Fargo, N.D.) at age five; moving to Omaha at age 10. She enjoys the adventure of trying different foods and spelunking. 
 
She has been a pharmacy technician at Walgreens for the past four years, and is very interested in learning how the human body works from a health and medicine perspective.
York, Neb. native, Kelli Gruber received her bachelor’s in biology from the University of Nebraska Lincoln and a master’s in epidemiology from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. As a student, she worked on several cancer epidemiology projects and collaborated with the Nebraska Cancer Registry at the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. After graduation, she was accepted into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists Applied Epidemiology Fellowship where her two-year position, based at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in Denver, focused on chronic disease and oral health epidemiology. 
 
Gruber enjoys spending time with family and friends, food, running and traveling.

SERVICES FEATURE: Toolkit Development

SERVICES: Toolkit development informed by literature searches and interviews
 
One of the most tangible results of our measurement and evaluation work can come in the form of a toolkit. These tend to be user-friendly tools and have great practicality for anyone working in a particular area. One public health nutrition toolkit that we developed that we think has clear relevance and potential for both researchers and practitioners is our Farm to School toolkit, available for free online.
 
Through the Communities Putting Prevention to Work grant funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Center staff worked with the Douglas County Health Department and other community partners from 2010 through 2012 on a Farm to School initiative, to identify opportunities and barriers related to local foods access at seven Omaha area school districts.
 
As the result of surveys, interviews and information-sharing meetings with farmers, school food service directors and food distributors, we developed a toolkit that could be used by these various stakeholders and others (e.g., parents, wholesale distributors) to simplify the local food acquisition process.
 
Included in the toolkit is information about the definition of local foods, why they matter, what guidelines a school district needs to follow, the Farm to School program, promotional materials that can be distributed in schools, a checklist for schools, local food sources and other resources.
 
Another important and relevant toolkit that was developed by the Center with funding from the Healthy Eating Research Program, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, was a toolkit of measures for practitioners working in healthy food retail/food access. This was developed after a literature search of corner store related research, and a set of 15 interviews conducted with national content experts and 30 interviews with local store owners in Nebraska. 

LiveWell Colorado School Food Evaluation

The LiveWell@School Food Initiative partners with Colorado school districts to transition school food from highly processed to scratch cooked using whole, fresh ingredients. This occurs through on-site culinary support, strategic action planning, and operations and marketing technical assistance for Food & Nutrition Service Departments around the state.
 
The Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition is in its third year of evaluation for this LiveWell Colorado initiative. Since summer 2013, the Center has assessed the progress over 90 participating school districts and assisted LiveWell Colorado in methodically updating their model to best serve the districts. Center staff members have provided both process and outcome evaluation, including a plate waste feasibility study, curriculum development, chef knowledge testing and the implementation of a qualitative menu analysis and multiple food service director interviews.
 
One unique aspect of the evaluation plan is a longitudinal study of the menu changes and sustainability of the program in five districts, which have been assessed for three years. An opportunity to collect this level of data on the districts allows Center staff to measure change in an environment that takes several years to shape.
 
Post-assessments for five of the 2015 districts across Colorado, as well as eight pre-assessments for the new 2016 districts began in March and will continue through May. This process consists of the on-site menu review and interviews with food service directors regarding goals and outcomes of the LiveWell@School Food Initiative. Reports will be developed following data collection.
 
2013 district data was developed as a manuscript and accepted by the Journal of School Health, which will be published later this year.

5-4-3-2-1 Go! FINAL DATA COLLECTION IN PROGRESS

In late 2014, Center staff began evaluation of the 5-4-3-2-1 Go! program, which was developed by the Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children (CLOCC) and is implemented by Go Nebraska Kids (CHI Health).
 
The 5-4-3-2-1 Go! public education message contains recommendations for children and families to promote a healthy lifestyle: five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, four servings of water a day, three servings of low-fat dairy a day, two or less hours of screen time a day and one or more hours of physical activity a day.
 
CHI Health received a grant from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services Division of Public Health to expand the program into five counties in Nebraska – Douglas, Otoe, Colfax, Sarpy and Cass – over a two-year period (October 1, 2014 through September 30, 2016).
 
Implementation has included campaigns in schools, organizations that offer out-of-school-time activities and other community settings, such as physicians’ clinics during kindergarten physicals. All of these sites received a toolkit and supporting materials that provides resources and ideas for promoting health and wellness through 5-4-3-2-1 Go! campaigns to share with participating students and their families. Each county has a workgroup that includes representatives from area organizations.
 
For the evaluation, Center staff are measuring children's awareness of the program to determine whether it has had an impact on behavior and/or attitude changes for children in grades K-5. Follow-up data collection is occurring over the next few months via post-campaign surveys with children and interviews with key contacts in schools, out-of-school organizations and medical providers, all of which disseminated 5-4-3-2-1 Go! campaign information.
 
A final evaluation report will be presented to CHI Health in September.

Omaha Nutrition Education Collaborative (ONEC) Dissemination of Teach Kids Nutrition Videos

Collaborating with Omaha-area child care experts and funded by a Children’s Hospital & Medical Center Preventing Childhood Obesity Community Grant, Center team members have researched, produced, distributed and evaluated a series of online instructional videos that teach children healthy eating and physical activity habits.
 
In March, the third year of this project wrapped up with a focus on building awareness and dissemination of the videos and accompanying workbook. In-person trainings with representatives from six childcare centers and 16 home-based providers were conducted in the Omaha, Neb. area to teach employees how to use these videos to engage children in active play and educate them about nutrition during meals. These trainings consisted of walking through seven videos, as well as an interactive food demonstration, where Center staff prepare a healthy menu item instructing care providers on how to prepare the items with children. Child care centers are able to gain continuing education credit through the State of Nebraska for their participation in these trainings.
 
Teach Kids Nutrition materials are available for free in English and Spanish, and online at http://www.teachkidsnutrition.org.
 
Videos:
Introductory Video: Explains series and available resources
Video 1: Movement and Motor Skills
Video 2: Encouraging Physical Activity
Video 3: Teaching Taste, Texture, and Color
Video 4: Teaching Nutritional Benefits of Eating Healthy Foods
Video 5: Teaching Portion Size
Video 6: Teaching Verbal Praise
Video 7: Putting It All Together

Measuring Behavior 2016 Conference 

Executive Director Dr. Amy Yaroch will be attending the Measuring Choice Behavior 2016 symposium in Dublin, Ireland, May 25 through 27. This is the first time the Center has been represented at this meeting, and Dr. Yaroch will be presenting an oral presentation on dietary assessment methodology.

Panhandle Focus Groups and Interviews

Research Associate Tom Barnard and Graduate Research Assistant Alethea Chiappone traveled to Chadron, Scottsbluff and Bridgeport, Neb. April 26 through 30 to conduct two convenience store owner interviews and two focus groups for the 1422 project. Topics for the Panhandle Public Health District were on attitudes/perceptions of food environment and healthy food retail program. Between the two focus groups there was a total of 13 people.
 
During their down time, they visited Scottsbluff National Monument, Wildcat Hills State Recreation Area and Chimney Rock.

LiveWell@School Food Initiative Interviews

Associate Director Leah Carpenter is visiting 13 Colorado School districts during April and May in order to do post-assessments with five 2015 districts exiting the program, and pre-assessments with eight new 2016 districts. These assessments consist of a quantitative menu analysis to collect information on a district’s current menu and/or assess changes to the menu since a district's initial involvement in the LW@SFI. In addition, an interview is conducted with the districts to determine goals for the next 18 months in the LW@SFI or gain feedback from the exiting districts on their experience with the program and their plans for sustainability.

Bertmann, Farryl M. W., and Amy L. Yaroch. “Role of Breast Milk and Breastfeeding within the Context of a Sustainable, Resilient Food System.” Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition 0, no. 0 (April 22, 2016): 1–12. doi:10.1080/19320248.2015.1066732.

Karen Glanz, Lauren Johnson, Amy L. Yaroch, Matthew Phillips, Guadalupe X. Ayala, and Erica L. Davis. “Measures of Retail Food Store Environments and Sales: Review and Implications for Healthy Eating Initiatives.” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 48, no. 4 (April 2016): 280–88.e1. doi:10.1016/j.jneb.2016.02.003.

Schober, DJ, Sella, AC, Fernandez, C., Ferral, C, Yaroch AL. "Participatory Action Research to Develop Nutrition Education Videos for Child Care ProvidersL the Omaha Nutrition Education Collaborative." Pedagogy in Health Promotion, Accessed April 14, 2016. doi: 10.1177/2373379915627669.

About Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition

The Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition aids in survey development and evaluation for national organizations and others. If you are interested in finding out more about these services, please contact
Dr. Amy Yaroch, executive director, at ayaroch@centerfornutrition.org.

Copyright © *|2016|* *|Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition|*, All rights reserved.


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