ASU Food Policy and Environment Research Group

Many factors influence children’s health behaviors and health outcomes. The Social Ecological Model (SEM) groups these factors into interactive layers, creating a framework for understanding their influence and for designing interventions to achieve positive change. The layers of influence in the SEM include individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and policy factors (see figure). The New Jersey Child Health Study (NJCHS) was designed to examine how specific layers of the SEM, particularly food and physical activity environments in schools and communities, affect obesity outcomes in children

This study aims to examine children’s fruit, vegetable, and added sugar consumption relative to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the American Heart Association’s recommendations, as well as to compare children’s reported consumption with parental perception of the child’s overall diet quality. Data were drawn from 2 independent, cross sectional panels (2009–10 and 2014–15) of the New Jersey Child Health Study. The analytical sample included 2229 households located in five New Jersey cities. Daily consumption of fruit (cups), vegetables (cups), and added sugars (teaspoons) for all children (3–18 years old) were based on parent reports. Multivariate linear regression analyses estimated children’s adjusted fruit, vegetable, and added sugar consumption across parents’ perception categories (Disagree; Somewhat Agree; and Strongly Agree that their child eats healthy). Although only a small proportion of children meet recommendations, the majority of parents strongly agreed that their child ate healthy. Nonetheless, significant differences, in the expected direction, were observed in vegetable and fruit consumption (but not sugar) across parental perceptional categories for most age/sex groups. Dietary interventions tailored to parents should include specific quantity and serving-size information for fruit and vegetable recommendations, based on their child’s age/sex, and highlight sources of added sugar and their sugar content.

Introduction: Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities (HKHC) is an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to prevent obesity among high-risk children by changing local policies, systems, and environments. In 2009, 105 community partnerships applied for funding from HKHC. Later that year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released recommended community strategies to prevent obesity by changing environments and policies. The objective of this analysis was to describe the strategies proposed by the 41 HKHC partnerships that received funding and compare them to the CDC recommendations.

Methods: We analyzed the funded proposals to assess the types and prevalence of the strategies proposed and mapped them onto the CDC recommendations.

Results: The most prevalent strategies proposed by HKHC-funded partnerships were providing incentives to retailers to locate and serve healthier foods in underserved areas, improving mechanisms for purchasing food from farms, enhancing infrastructure that supports walking and cycling, and improving access to outdoor recreational facilities.

Conclusion: The strategies proposed by HKHC partnerships were well aligned with the CDC recommendations. The popular strategies proposed by HKHC partnerships were those for which there were existing examples of successful implementation. Our analysis provides an example of how information from communities, obtained through grant-writing efforts, can be used to assess the status of the field, guide future research, and provide direction for future investments.