What’s New

Californians, join our partners at ENACT Day on March 30th! This annual event brings community members and advocates from all over California together in Sacramento to educate their state representatives and advocate for nutrition and physical activity legislation. All you need is your passion, and an optional donation. Can’t travel to Sacramento? Register for Virtual ENACT Day! Event registration and details here.

In January the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service released the latest update of SNAP-Ed Strategies & Interventions: An Obesity Prevention Toolkit for States, commonly known as the SNAP-Ed Toolkit. The Toolkit is designed to help SNAP-Ed implementing agencies identify evidence-based and emerging intervention programs and strategies to help low-resource residents achieve healthy lifestyles and prevent certain chronic diseases. Choosing to implement evidence-based and emerging interventions ensures the greatest return on investment of public funds.

The Center for Wellness and Nutrition (CWN) is proud to announce that the Healthy Retail Recognition Pilot is featured as an emerging intervention in the new SNAP-Ed Toolkit. CWN staff developed and implemented the pilot through a contract with the California Department of Public Health in partnership with the local health departments of Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties. The pilot explored the effectiveness of a program to motivate and enable small, independent retail stores in low-income areas to identify and achieve changes to their store that increase the community’s access to healthy food. Participating retailers would receive a program decal to provide recognition to the business owners and serve as a cue for consumers to easily identify stores that stock healthier foods and beverages.

CWN staff is available to answer any questions you may have about the pilot and can even provide assistance in implementing a Healthy Retail Recognition Program in your communities. For more information, contact [email protected].

Dedicated Champion Providers from throughout California recently met in Los Angeles to brainstorm on how they can influence health beyond clinics and into communities of need. Volunteer doctors and dentists are making a difference in communities across California. One doctor has established a Reverse Food Truck that collects food donations at farmers’ markets and redistributes fresh produce to schools and food banks. Another doctor has started an Early Childhood Obesity Prevention Action Group in her county and another doctor provided testimony to fight against a fast food drive-through in her community. 

The Center helped to launch the Champion Providers initiative in 2013 and since then has worked in collaboration with faculty from the University of California, San Francisco to provide training and technical assistance. Champion Providers are encouraged to work with partners such as local health departments that may need the voice of a physician to advance policy, systems, and environmental changes to support nutrition and physical activity. This work is sponsored by the Nutrition Education and Obesity Prevention Branch in the California Department of Public Health. For more information contact [email protected].

Amy DeLisio, Program Director for the Center for Wellness and Nutrition presented information on the Healthy Diva Beauty Salon Pilot Project at the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior Annual Meeting on July 26, 2015 in Pittsburgh, PA. Amy shared the results and innovative approaches in technology that were used to engage African American women in San Diego to increase their physical activity and fruit and vegetable consumption. For more information on this project, contact Amy DeLisio.

We are happy to announce the Center was awarded a “Strategic Designs for Youth Engagement” project by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. This project will evaluate up to 30 youth groups over the course of the summer with the goal of identifying key successes of utilizing youth engagement as a policy, systems, and environmental change strategy.

“The Center for Wellness and Nutrition (Center) has been a valued partner in evaluating the revision and implementation of Michigan Harvest of the Month (MiHOTM) in retail sites and schools throughout our state. The Center’s evaluation work has helped us refine the program implementation, improve intervention fidelity, and develop tools for nutrition educators to bring MiHOTM to life in low-income schools and communities throughout Michigan. Our partnership with the Center has resulted in tools and resources that contribute to continuous program improvement, increased capacity, and our ongoing development of community partnerships key to successful implementation of MiHOTM into the future.”

– Marci Scott,
Michigan Fitness Foundation

The Center for Wellness and Nutrition (Center) has formed a partnership with the National Network of Public Health Institutes (NNPHI) in the Southeast Region of the United States to support agencies implementing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed). The states participating in this project include: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Funding has been provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Center will work with the Southeast Region to look beyond SNAP-Ed direct education and incorporate policy, systems, and environmental strategies as a support mechanism to SNAP-Ed Implementing Agencies as well as include evaluation measures and develop partnership opportunities with NNPHI members.

The Center for Wellness and Nutrition is pleased to have partnered with Placer County Health and Human Services to compete and be awarded the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed) Get Fresh! Grant through the California Department of Social Services. This award will provide nutrition education to CalWORKs and CalFresh clients, implement Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) systems at two unserved farmers’ markets, create community gardens for foster youth and veterans, and enhance gleaning activities to increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables at food banks and food closets within the county. This funding is pending final United States Department of Agriculture approval as part of the California State SNAP-Ed Plan.

Sharon Sugerman, Director of Research and Evaluation for the Center for Wellness and Nutrition, was the recipient of an award honoring her contributions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed) program from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Western Regional Office at a SNAP-Ed Forum held in Sacramento, CA on March 18, 2015. The award was presented by Andrew Riesenberg, Team Leader for USDA Western Regional Office, during the closing session of the conference.

Sharon is also second author on a recently-published journal article in Preventing Chronic Disease entitled “Reach of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—Education Interventions and Nutrition and Physical Activity-Related Outcomes, California, 2011—2012.” This study combined information on the interventions of the USDA SNAP-Ed with 5,927 interview responses from the California Health Interview Survey to investigate associations between levels of intervention reach in low-income census tracts in California and self-reported physical activity and consumption of fruits and vegetables, fast food, and sugar-sweetened beverages. Learn more by clicking on this link: www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2015/14_0449.htm.