Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA
(N/A)
FAIRBANKS,AK 99775
Performing Department
Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension
Non Technical Summary
Childhood obesity is an important determinant of adult obesity. Obese children have a higher chance of obesity, premature death and disability in adulthood. Obese children have breathing difficulties, increased risk of fractures, hypertension, early markers of cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance and psychological effects. Contributors to obesity occur across the life course and include both early undernutrition and nutrition excess. Obesity is associated with social and health problems. Prevention is the best long term solution.This multistate project will support and extend the CHL network, training, intervention activities and research programs initiated through CHL, which has demonstrate feasability of the approach. The land grant institutions held stakeholder meetings that resulted in the CHL application. Land grant colleges in the Pacific have been an organizing mechanism for CHL. This multistate project will continue to be an important mechanism to maintain a stable partnership and coordinated activity. Without this tool the group will need to rely on grant opportunities that are now smaller and will likely result in smaller less coordinated subsets of the partners working together. This project has the potential to model multistates as platforms for coordinated health extension coalitions to facilitate and support broad sector partnership for health.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
Facilitate use of CHL data, findings related to child obesity and its multilevel (policy, system, and environmental) determinants.
Promote partnership and coalition building and strengthening in and among Pacific communities and the region around child health.
Build and sustain a child health and nutrition monitoring system in the Pacific.
Project Methods
The multistate project will use existing core CHL infrastructure (Coordinating Center, Data Center, Training Center) and guidelines (Data Use, Publication, Core Values) to share data, tools, training and intervention materials among Pacific jurisdictions. The CHL infrastructure includes data coordination, training in child obesity prevention, and leadership on obesity measurement and standardization (Li et al 2015, Fialkowski et al. 2015, Novotny et al. 2013).The CHLN will have available data from the CHL prevalence and intervention studies, tools used to collect those data (accelerometers, stadiometers, scales, measuring tapes, Pacific Tracker diet and activity software), training material developed (Pacific Food Guide, CHL Summer Institute), and CHL intervention materials (Role Model Training Guide, Master Gardening and Food Preservation Materials). Materials not covered by privacy rules (HIPAA and IRB) will be publically available, mostly through the CHL website (www.chl-pacific.org).These resources, data, and collaborations will form the basis of new grant proposals, training programs, extension and outreach activities and capacity building within each jurisdiction.