MAY NEWS
SCHOBER AWARDED PREVENTING CHILDHOOD OBESITY COMMUNITY GRANT
Center Research Scientist Dan Schober, PhD was awarded one of five Children's Hospital & Medical Center Preventing Childhood Obesity Community Grants for the Omaha Nutrition Education Collaborative (ONEC).
ONEC will develop at least five instructional online videos to help early care and education providers incorporate effective nutrition learning experiences for children. ONEC will disseminate the videos to staff at Educare Center of Omaha facilities and to the early care and education community at large.
TASTINGS FOR HEALTHY KIDS MENU PROJECT
HAPPENING NEXT MONTH
The Center’s long-awaited healthy children’s menu project, called “Fresco,” is quickly taking shape. Center staff members have been working with Ignacio Chavez, owner of El Alamo restaurant on South 24th Street in Omaha, to track which existing menu items are being ordered for children while devising new kid-friendly menu items to be rolled out this summer. Sales data is being collected throughout the project, as well as reactions to the new menu.
Consulting chef Jillian Mahl, a partner in The Green Bowl Project, has spent time in the restaurant’s kitchen observing preparation techniques, ingredient content and amounts of vegetables used, and will be making suggestions for improving healthfulness of existing menu items in addition to developing new menu items. For example, in some cases brown rice will be replacing white rice.
Although targeted to children, adults will also be able to order these new items that will feature more fresh ingredients and smaller portion sizes. Of the potential new menu items, two salads will be sampled at Taste of Omaha at the end of this month, and a tasting event will be held at El Alamo in June. Anyone interested in attending the June tasting event should contact Leah Carpenter at (402) 559-5500 or lcarpenter@centerfornutrition.org.
Fresco is the first project funded by the Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition Foundation.
CENTER EVALUATING
LET’S MOVE SALAD BARS TO SCHOOLS
Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools is an initiative of the Food Family Farming Foundation, National Fruit and Vegetable Alliance, United Fresh Produce Association Foundation and Whole Foods Market to support First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative. The goal of the Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools program is to fund and award 6,000 salad bars over three years.
The Center is working with the Food Family Farming Foundation to survey approximately 600 salad bar grantees (schools and school districts) and conduct interviews with school food service personnel. Participants are being asked about successes of and barriers to salad bar implementation in their schools. An additional survey will be administered to schools not participating in the salad bar program to assess barriers to non-participation.
Founded by Chef Ann Cooper, the Food Family Farming Foundation is a non-profit organization created to empower schools to serve nutritious whole food to all students.
FARM TO PAYPAL PROGRAM LAUNCHING
The Center is working with PayPal and Von Weihe Farms Produce to offer a farm-to-worksite program this summer. Von Weihe Farms Produce, a small-scale diversified vegetable producer in Carson, Iowa, will be making weekly deliveries of pre-ordered produce to PayPal’s 3,000-employee campus in La Vista, Neb.
This four-week program will be instituted in July with a “meet your farmer” opportunity during PayPal’s employee health fair on May 9. Employees will be informed of available produce each week when they are able to place orders online. Von Weihe Farms Produce will offer additional a la carte produce items for sale in a farm stand style during the scheduled pickup time.
Center staff members will conduct surveys prior to and following the program, looking at attitudes toward local foods, food-buying practices and healthy food access – and potential changes in these attitudes and practices as a result of the project.
This is the second phase of the Center’s Nebraska food system assessment. Previous surveys and focus groups determined that people are interested in and see value in local foods, but access to them has been a barrier. This implementation step will create easier access by making produce available at the workplace.
This second phase project is funded by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.
YAROCH NAMED SBM OFFICER
Center Executive Director Amy Yaroch, PhD, is serving a three-year term on the Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) Board. Yaroch has been involved in behavioral medicine across multiple disciplines including nutrition, obesity prevention and sun safety/skin cancer prevention in an effort to improve public health. As member delegate, she wants to be a liaison back to the SBM community, utilizing her mentoring experiences to help emerging multi-disciplinary behavioral scientists. Yaroch also sits on the SBM Health Policy Committee.
SMITH AWAY FOR SUMMER RESEARCH WORK
Center Graduate Assistant Teresa Smith, M.S. was recently awarded a pre-doctoral fellowship in the Cancer Epidemiology Education in Special Populations (CEESP) Program with Dr. Amr Soliman. The CEESP Program provides educational opportunities for students to learn about cancer epidemiology in special populations as well as translation of epidemiology into cancer control and prevention interventions and is funded by a grant from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health.
Also serving as Smith’s dissertation project, she plans to develop and pilot test a home environment measurement tool focused on food preparation behaviors for Hispanic parents.
PINARD AND YAROCH TRAVELLING TO BELGIUM
Drs. Amy Yaroch and Courtney Pinard will be traveling to Belgium later this month for the International Society for Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (ISBNPA) annual meeting.
Pinard will be giving an oral presentation titled “Multiple Health Behaviors and the Association with Perceptions and Motivation to Change: Results from the National Cancer Institute’s Food Attitudes and Behaviors (FAB) Survey.”
A poster titled “Restaurant and Home Food Policies among Low-Income English and Spanish Speaking Parent-Child Dyads” by Pinard and Yaroch along with Leah Carpenter, MPH and Mary Chapman from the Center will also be presented at the meeting.
Yaroch is chair of two events, a debate between Pinard and Dr. Heather Patrick from the National Cancer Institute and a symposium. Pinard’s debate,“Theoretical Application in Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity Research – Where Do We Go From Here?”, will facilitate discussion regarding the use of theories to guide nutrition and physical activity research. Both Yaroch and Pinard will be participants in the symposium, “Assessing the Food System Environment Across Multiple Settings.”
VOLUNTEERS WANTED FOR HUNGER SURVEY
Project Manager Leah Carpenter continues to recruit and train volunteers to assist with the Hunger in America 2014 survey. Agency visits have already begun, and three agency visits per week on average will be scheduled through the summer. If you are interested in volunteering in Nebraska or Western Iowa contact Carpenter at (402) 559-5500 or lcarpenter@centerfornutrition.org for details.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Siahpush M, Singh GK, Tibbits M, Pinard CA, Shaikh RA, Yaroch A. It is better to be a fat ex-smoker than a thin smoker: findings from the 1997-2004 National Health Interview Survey-National Death Index linkage study. Tob Control. 2013.
Goodman AB, Blanck HM, Sherry B, Park S, Nebeling L, Yaroch AL. Behaviors and Attitudes Associated With Low Drinking Water Intake Among US Adults, Food Attitudes and Behaviors Survey, 2007. Preventing Chronic Disease. 2013;10.
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.
