Empowering Communities to Eat Healthier Foods & Be More Active

If you’re looking to change your community environment where poor diet, physical inactivity, and obesity are the norm, then the Center for Wellness and Nutrition (CWN) has the experience and expertise you need. CWN’s multi-disciplinary staff can work with health departments, community organizations, private industry, and others:

Program Design Develop and implement targeted, culturally relevant initiatives Empower young people to make healthy changes Engage the food retail industry to improve access to healthy foods

Evaluation Conduct program evaluation – impact and outcome, evaluation of pilot projects, and program efficacy Develop process evaluation data collection systems

Capacity Building Build local capacity Develop partnerships with government, non-profit, and for-profit groups Provide training and technical assistance

Our Expertise

The Center for Wellness and Nutrition is a program of the Public Health Institute. We offer specialized expertise in social marketing, cultural competency, partnership development, strategic planning, training and technical assistance, and research and evaluation. CWN can oversee full-scale projects from development to implementation, and provide training and consultation to help guide your efforts and build the capacity of your staff.

With over 15 years of experience working with local, state, and federal grants, we’re well versed in supporting public initiatives and navigating the intricacies of government funding, reporting, and procurement. We can partner with you to help you work more efficiently with these government organizations.

Nationally Recognized Evaluation Experts

Our research and evaluation staff are leaders in the field of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed) evaluation. We have carried out projects using diverse evaluation activities and methods of data collection since 1998 in its work for California Department of Public Health’s (CDPH) SNAP-Ed. In 2011, the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior published a supplement featuring evaluation results from a variety of the CDPH SNAP-Ed interventions and formative research.[1] In addition to our extended history of creating evaluation protocols, data analysis, and formative research, our staff has also worked to build the capacity of individual communities to use data for community change.

In partnership with the CDPH, our research and evaluation staff created the Communities of Excellence in Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity Prevention (CX³) Program – a community assessment project that utilizes a suite of tools for collecting and measuring food quality, availability, and affordability in low-income communities. CX³ is a good example of how evaluation can meet action through multiple methods – mapping, field surveys, observation, and stakeholder engagement through community forums.

Making Health Accessible for All 

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