August 2007

News from the PAN Branch

Staff Changes in the PAN Branch

Bithiah Lafontant, the PAN Branch’s Healthy Weight Communications Specialist, has resigned her position effective July 24th, and is relocating to Washington, D.C., where she will be serving as the Communications Specialist for the American Public Health Association. Please join us in wishing Bithiah a fond farewell as she and her husband embark on a new phase in their lives.

Marie Shelton has accepted the position as Healthy Weight Communications Specialist for the PAN Branch starting August 13th.

Marie comes to us from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she has been serving as a Health Communications Fellow. As part of her fellowship, Marie has been the lead developer of social marketing and strategic planning for CDC’s fruits and vegetables program, re-branding the fruits and vegetables Web site, and developing the nutrition coordinator’s guidance for the roll-out of Fruits & Veggies – More Matters™, among other projects. Prior to joining CDC, Marie worked at UNC-CH as a study coordinator, taught human nutrition at Cabarrus College, and worked as a community income manager for the American Cancer Society. Marie is a certified Master Fitness Specialist and a Registered Dietitian. Marie stays fit by running and practicing yoga, and dabbles in painting with acrylics on canvas.

For assistance with Eat Smart, Move More North Carolina communications issues, please contact Sheree Vodicka at sheree.vodicka@ncmail.net or 919-707-5217.

Programs, Projects and Initiatives

No featured Programs, Projects or Initiatives this month.

Success Stories

No featured stories this month.

Featured Resources and Research

CDC Publishes Advancing the Nation’s Health: A Guide to Public Health Research Needs, 2006-2015

Advancing the Nation’s Health: A Guide to Public Health Research Needs, 2006-2015 (Research Guide) is now available to CDC staff and partners. The Research Guide provides a comprehensive, long-range vision of national and global public health needs that CDC and its partners can address through research. The Research Guide helps identify critical knowledge needed to achieve CDC’s new Health Protection Goals which are designed to maximize the health impact of programs, services, and emergency responses.

To view the Research Guide and Comments on the Public Comment draft, go to
this page on the CDC site.

Help Get the Word Out

• Disseminate this information to your colleagues and partners
• Encourage them to publicize this information through their newsletters, Listservs and Websites
• Encourage them to refer to the Research Guide for comprehensive information on public health research needs

For more information contact:

Office of Public Health Research (OPHR)/CDC
Mailstop D-72
Phone: 404-639-4621
ResearchGuide@cdc.gov
CDC website

New Nutrition Education and Physical Activity Exemplary Practices Guide for Afterschool Programs

We would like to share with you the publication by the Center for Collaborative Solutions (CCS) of its new guide for afterschool programs: Developing Exemplary Practices in Nutrition and Physical Activity in Afterschool Programs. If you’ve been looking for great ideas for afterschool programs, visit www.ccscenter.org to download a cop. It was developed in response to California’s Proposition 49 which, once a budget threshold was passed, would put over $500M into afterschool programs that provide educational enrichment. The “trigger” was pulled last year, so now school districts and county offices of education are delivering services themselves or contracting w/ other entities. This document is intended to help them!

This guide, funded by the Network for a Healthy California (USDA Food Stamp Nutrition Education) and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, is designed to help afterschool program leaders and their partners join in the fight against the obesity epidemic facing our children and youth today in a systematic and effective way. We have been working with CCS over the past two years on the development of this guide and the creation of regional learning centers to help other afterschool programs learn how to implement these practices. We believe that this guide can play an important role nationally in fighting the obesity epidemic and would like to work with you to help get the word out.

Afterschool programs represent an environment that can make a difference to children across the state—because state afterschool funding in California focuses on low income schools where at least 50 percent of the students are eligible for free and reduced lunches, and because afterschool programs have more flexibility than found in the regular school day, they provide excellent opportunities for addressing the most at-risk children.

This guide explains six exemplary practices and contains indicator rubrics that can be used by programs to assess how they are doing in each of the six practice areas and to help them focus their attention on the areas they want to improve. The indicators will also help programs measure their improvement over time. The practices include:
* establishing the vision;
* integrating nutrition and physical activity with youth development principles;
* providing exciting and meaningful learning experiences that integrate nutrition and physical activity into core activities;
* working closely with the community, families and the school as full partners;
* improving food security; and
* developing diversified funding to sustain a quality program over time.

Staff play a key role—and the guide explains just how central it is.

The six practices were developed by CCS after initial research, focus group discussions, and consultation with a statewide stakeholders group of nutrition, physical activity, afterschool, education and other experts. Then a learning community of 11 afterschool programs, selected for their strong nutrition and physical activity focus, used the practices. Representatives from these afterschool programs have been meeting together over the past two years to strengthen their programs by learning from each other and other experts in the field. The meetings provided an opportunity to revise and improve the exemplary practices. With their input and the feedback from the statewide stakeholders group, CCS finalized the guide, which is now posted on its website and can be downloaded in its entirety.

The guide is part of the CCS’ three-year initiative, Healthy Behaviors for Children and Families: Strengthening Afterschool Programs through Exemplary Nutrition, Physical Activity and Food Security Practices, under a contract with the Network for a Healthy California. During 2007-2008, CCS will work with the learning community afterschool programs to develop them into regional learning centers that can provide hands-on help to other afterschool programs.

Additional Tip Sheets Now Available for Download.

CDC has updated additional tip sheets that contain the FVMM logo. ‘Fruits & Veggies On the Go!’ provides helpful tips for incorporating fruits and veggies into daily life. ‘Your Questions Answers’ addresses how to cook, prepare, and store fruits and vegetables. ‘Entertain the Fruit & Veggie Way’ encourages individuals to incorporate fruits and vegetables at parties and gatherings. These tip sheets plus more can be downloaded from Sitescape. We also plan to post these to CDC partner web site in the coming weeks.

Capacity-Building Workshops for Youth Development Presented By the Institute for Youth Development & WAIT

Training is scheduled for August 16-17, 2007 in San Francisco, CA. More information can be found on the Institute for Youth Development website.

Research

Here are some helpful fruit and vegetable research articles:

From JADA, Dresnowski et al. discusses the relationship between dietary energy density and diet cost among a sample of French adults.

In the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, De Bourdeaudhuij et al. describes personal, social and environmental predictors of fruit and vegetable intake in 11-year-old children in Europe. Ledikwe et al. reports the effects of behavioral interventions on dietary energy density and whether changes in energy density related to changes in body weight.

In the 01/2007 issue of Sight and Life Magazine, the impact of vouchers for fresh fruits and vegetables in the WIC program is presented. Sacerdote et al. examines the relationship between fruit and vegetable intake, gene polymorphisms, and risk of bladder cancer.

From the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, Park et al. examines the association between fruit and vegetable intake and risk of colorectal cancer.

Low-Energy-Density Diets Are Associated with Higher Diet Quality and Higher Diet Costs in French Adults.pdf. Personal social and environmental predictors of daily fruit and vegetable intake in 11 year old children in nine European countries.pdf. Reductions in dietary energy density are associated with weight loss in overweight and obese participants in the Premier trial.pdf. Impact of vouchers for purchasing fresh fruits and vegetables among low income mothers.pdf. Intake of fruits and vegetables and polymorphisms in DNA repair genes in bladder cancer.pdf. Fruit and vegetable intakes and risk of colorectal cancer in the NIH AARP diet and health study.pdf.

Resources

Recipe Database. This is a list of all the recipes to date that meet Products Promotable criteria in the CDC recipe database. All recipes can be found online at www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov.

Healthy Eating & Physical Activity: Addressing Inequities in Urban Environments. This resource captures a dynamic discussion among experts with extensive ‘on the ground experience’ who joined together to discuss issues like communitywide impact, sustainability and partnerships for improving food and activity opportunities in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. To see the best practices and promising approaches highlighted in the report.

2006 SMART BRFSS Data and Prevalence Tables Now Available

2006 BRFSS Maps Now Available

The CDC’s Behavioral Surveillance Branch in the Division of Adult and Community Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Coordinating Center for Health Promotion, is pleased to announce the joint release of the 2006 SMART BRFSS data and prevalence tables and the BRFSS Maps. This marks the first-ever joint launch of SMART and Maps data, as well as the earliest launch ever for either SMART or Maps.

SMART BRFSS (Selected Metropolitan/Micropolitan Area Risk Trends from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System) began with the analysis of data from the 2002 BRFSS. It now includes data from 2002 through 2006, with prevalence estimates for over 170 metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas (MMSAs), as well as many counties within those areas.

There are 6 additional MMSAs with data available for 2006, including Great Falls, Montana; Kalispell, Montana; Missoula, Montana; Hilton Head Island-Beaufort, South Carolina; Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; and Lubbock, Texas. As with the past data, the Web site includes the data sets and prevalence tables for MMSAs and counties, as well as pre-set Quick View charts which compare county, MMSA, and state data for seven select risk factors in an easy-to-print PDF format.

BRFSS Maps is a system that allows users to visualize the prevalence estimates, making them more accessible to a variety of audiences. Users can choose to map the entire country, or to zoom in on a region or state, including the MMSAs within that area. Users can also download GIS data files.

The SMART BRFSS data and prevalence tables are located at the SMART BRFSS Home Page.

The BRFSS Maps are located at this site.

For more information, please contact Lina Balluz, Sc.D., M.P.H. at 770-488-2466 or lib7@cdc.gov.

Active Living Research Website Revamp

The Active Living Research’s Website has been revamped.

What’s new?

• Expanded information about the Active Living Research program and our mission to fight childhood obesity.
• All grants and resources are now searchable by topic area and population. Grants are also searchable by study type, grant cycle and principal investigator.
• Presentations from all previous ALR annual conferences — four in total — are now available.
• New sections designed specifically for policy-makers and media.
• Free open access to full text articles from five specific active living-related journals.
• An all-new, user-friendly graphical design.

If you’d like to go straight to the new site, you can find it here.

If you have inquiries, please address them to Chad Spoon at cspoon@projects.sdsu.edu.

Framingham Observational Study Notes Greater Incidence of Metabolic Syndrome among Adults consuming Soft Drinks

Middle-aged adults who drank more than one soft drink daily, either diet or regular, have a more than 40 percent greater rate of either having or developing metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions that increase the risk for heart disease, according to new data from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

A person is considered to have metabolic syndrome if he or she has three or more of the following five risk factors: waist circumference greater than or equal to 35 inches (women) or 40 inches (men), fasting blood glucose of greater than or equal to 100 mg/dL, triglycerides greater than or equal to 150 mg/dL; blood pressure greater than or equal to 135/85 mmHg, and HDL “good” cholesterol below 40mg/dL for men or below 50 mg/dL for women.

Results from the Framingham Heart Study’s “Soft Drink Consumption and Risk of Developing Cardio-Metabolic Risk Factors and the Metabolic Syndrome in Middle Aged Adults in the Community,” will be published online in “Circulation” on July 23, 2007.

“Other studies have shown that the extra calories and sugar in soft drinks contribute to weight gain, and therefore heart disease risk,” said Elizabeth G. Nabel, M.D., Director, NHLBI. “This study echoes those findings by extending the link to all soft drinks and the metabolic syndrome.”

While the authors acknowledge that the increased risk of metabolic syndrome associated with high-calorie, high-sugar regular soft drinks might be expected, the similar risk found among those drinking diet sodas is more challenging to understand, they say. It is worth noting that dietary patterns are similar across drinkers of both regular and diet soft drinks.

“Although our study adjusted for lifestyle factors, it is known that people who regularly drink soft drinks — even diet sodas — are also known to eat foods that are higher in calories and fat, and get less physical activity,” said Ramachandran Vasan, M.D, professor of medicine at Boston School of Medicine, and senior author of the paper.

“High soft drink consumption may in fact be a marker for metabolic syndrome risk, but more study is needed,” said Ravi Dhingra, M.D., instructor in medicine, Harvard Medical School, and lead author.

Data was collected in two ways, via physician-administered questionnaire that captured average daily of consumption of 12 ounce soft drinks, and a self-administered food frequency questionnaire that captured the frequency of diet versus regular soft drink intake. Both questionnaires were recorded during Heart Study visits scheduled in 1987-1991 and 1995-1998, and accounted for nearly 9,000 person observations.

“Our results point to the importance of long-term observational studies such as the Framingham Heart Study, which allow us to take a closer look at how aspects of diet are inter-related with health risks,” said Caroline Fox, MD, medical officer, Framingham Heart Study and study co-author.

For more information contact: CONTACT: NHLBI Communications, 301-496-4236, e-mail: Nhlbi_news@nhlbi.nih.gov

New NIH-Supported Study Characterizes Social Networks of Family, Friends, Influencing Obesity

People wondering about excessive weight gain might look to their relationships with family and friends for one clue, suggests new research reported July 26, 2007, in “The New England Journal of Medicine”. The study showed that obesity spreads within social networks and that the closer the social connection — even if people live in different households many miles apart — the greater the influence on developing obesity. The study, funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is the first to provide a detailed picture of the social networks involved in obesity and could prove useful in developing both clinical and public health interventions for obesity.

The analysis was conducted by Nicholas Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School, and James Fowler, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Diego, using data from the Framingham Heart Study. The Framingham Heart Study is supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, another NIH component.

“Nearly one in three American adults — 66 million men and women – are obese, which puts them at risk for a number of serious health problems, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. With the sharply rising rates of obesity in this country, we need to learn as much as we can about contributing factors. This study describes social network influences that might be an important part of that equation,” says NIA Director Richard J. Hodes, M.D.

A sedentary lifestyle and increased consumption of high-calorie foods are critical factors in the steep rise in the prevalence of obesity, the researchers note. But they suggest that a hierarchy of influence exists among family and friends on developing obesity, in which the attitudes, behaviors, and acceptance of obesity also might play an important role.

To explore whether obesity spreads from person to person within social networks, the research team gleaned weight, height and other data from the records of 5,124 Framingham Heart Study participants at up to seven time points between 1971 and 2003. In addition, they analyzed similar information from the Framingham records of these key participants’ parents, spouses, siblings, children and close friends. Together, these individuals formed a large, intertwined social web totaling 12,067 people. The average age of key participants at the inception of the study was 38 years, with a range of 21 to 70 years.

“We were able to reconstruct a large network of individuals who had been repeatedly weighed over time as part of the Framingham Heart Study, and we could see that as one person gained weight, those around him or her gained weight,” says Christakis. “We didn’t find that people who were overweight simply flocked together. Rather, we found what seemed to be a spread of obesity and that the likelihood of a person becoming obese depended on the nature of the relationship.”

“The rising rate of obesity threatens to reverse the decline in disability in the older population, with major implications for the health care system,” says Richard Suzman, Ph.D., director of the NIA’s Behavioral and Social Research Program. “This seminal study breaks important new ground in showing how social networks may amplify other factors and help account for the dramatic increase in obesity across the population.”

Findings include:

• A key participant’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if he or she had a close friend who became obese.
• In same-sex friendships, a close friend becoming obese increased a key participant’s chance of becoming obese by 71 percent. However, no such association was found in opposite-sex friendships.
• The perception of friendship also was an important factor. When two people identified each other as close friends, the key participant’s risk of becoming obese increased by 171 percent if his or her friend became obese. In contrast, a key participant was not likely to become obese if someone claimed a close friendship with him or her but the key participant did not report the friendship.
• Among pairs of siblings, one’s becoming obese increased the other’s chance of becoming obese by 40 percent. This finding was more marked among same-sex siblings than opposite-sex siblings.
• In married couples, one spouse’s becoming obese increased the likelihood of the other spouse becoming obese by 37 percent. Husbands and wives appeared to affect each other equally.
• Obesity spread across social ties, despite geographic distance from one person to another. Further, social distance — the degree of social separation between two people in the network — appeared to make more of a difference than geographic distance in the spread of behaviors and norms associated with obesity.
• An immediate neighbor’s becoming obese did not affect a person’s risk of becoming obese.
• Smoking behavior was not associated with the spread of obesity from person to person.

“We identified distinct clusters of obese people within social networks, and the clusters spread about three people deep,” Christakis says.

“People who were only one degree removed from each other socially, such as siblings or close friends, influenced one another twice as much as people who were two degrees removed from each other.”

RWJF - Program Areas - Childhood Obesity - News Digest - Participants in Anti-Obesity Campaign Targeting African Americans Lose 375,000 Pounds During First 14 Weeks

Formore information visit this link.

Legislation

No updates this month

Grants/Awards

National Institutes of Health Grant: Title: School-Based Interventions to Prevent Obesity (R21)

This Funding Opportunity Announcement encourages the formation of partnerships between academic institutions and school systems in order to develop and implement controlled, school-based intervention strategies designed to reduce the prevalence of obesity in childhood. This initiative also encourages evaluative comparisons of different intervention strategies, as well as the use of methods to detect synergistic interactions between different types of interventions.

Deadline Date:
This is a recurring program with three grant cycles:
February 16
June 16
and October 16.

Expiration Date:
November 2, 2007, unless reissued

Eligible organizations:
For-profit or non-profit, organizations, public or private institutions, such as universities, colleges, hospitals, and laboratories, units of State and local governments, eligible agencies of the Federal government, domestic or foreign institutions/organizations, faith-based or community-based organizations, Indian/Native American Tribal Government

For details, click on this link.

Training and Professional Development

Nutrition and Physical Activity Teleconferences

Every month, the CDC Division of Nutrition & Physical Activity (DNPA) sponsors a monthly teleconference on a variety of topics, but mostly dealing with nutrition &/or physical activity. The calls are scheduled the 2nd Thursday of each month from 1:30-2:30 p.m. Anyone who would like the handouts or participate in future calls please send an email to NC5ADAY@ncmail.net.

17th Baby Love Conference
August 27-28, 2007
Durham, NC
The Baby Love Conference Objectives are:

• Develop and strengthen skills needed for providing effective services to families.
• Learn innovative strategies and approaches for designing programs and services for pregnant women, children, and families.
• Improve knowledge of best practice models.
• Network with local and state health and human service providers across North Carolina.

For more information contact: Vienna.Barger@ncmail.net

2007 North Carolina Conference on Aging

September 10-12, 2007
Winston-Salem, NC

If you would like to attend this year’s conference in Winston-Salem, the conference Preprogram/Registration booklet is also available on the following web site: http://www.aging.unc.edu/nccoa/program.html

The registration form is on page 13 of the booklet and information on booking sleeping rooms at the conference hotel is available on page 14.

Don’t delay - send in your registration form today!

For more information contact:

Diane Wurzinger
UNC Institute on Aging
720 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Suite 200
Campus Box #1030
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1030
Phone: 919-843-2647
Fax: 919-966-0510
Email: diane_wurzinger@unc.edu

Center for Women’s Health and Wellness

Breastfeeding and Feminism Symposium: Focus on Reproductive Rights, Health and Justice
September 24-25, 2007
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

The Center for Women’s Health and Wellness at UNCG is pleased to announce the 3rd annual Breastfeeding and Feminism Symposium to be held this year in collaboration with the Center for Infant and Young Child Feeding and Care at UNC Chapel Hill. The focus this year is on breastfeeding as an issue of women’s reproductive rights, health and justice. It will be held September 24th and 25th in Chapel Hill, NC at the William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education.

Keynote addresses will be given by Dr. Barbara Katz-Rothman, Professor of Sociology at Baruch College, CUNY and Judy Norsigian, Director of Our Bodies Our Selves.

For more information contact: Paige Hall Smith, at: phsmith@uncg.edu

2007 Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo (FCNE)

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Excellence!
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
September 29-October 2, 2007

Be simultaneously exposed to an impressive past and an exciting future by attending the FNCE in Philadelphia, September 29 to October 2, 2007. Learn about new product releases, educational resources and cutting edge technology that will fortify the vision of your profession. Earn CPEs while experiencing culinary demonstrations, specialty exhibitor pavilions, over 300 leading food and nutrition exhibits, Meet the author book signings and much more!

In the “City of Neighborhoods” you will find yourself a part of your own special community with colleagues and industry experts passionately dedicated to a health and nutrition revolution for today and tomorrow.

Important Dates:

• Registration: Open June 1, 2007
• Early bird Deadline: August 22, 1007
• Program Preview: Available May 1, 2007

For more information visit: http://www.apha.org/meetings

Society for Public Health Education’s (SOPHE) 58th Annual Meeting

Partnerships to Achieve Health Equity
October 31 – November 3, 2007
Alexandria, VA

SOPHE is pleased to be partnering with CDC’s Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH 2010) program and Eta Sigma Gamma for its 40th Annual Meeting.

Sub-themes include health systems change; social determinants of health and transdisciplinary approaches to health education; health communications, health literacy and technology; cultural competence in bridging differences, and; evaluation and dissemination of evidence-based approaches.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email Cynthia Crocker at ccrocker@cdc.gov.

2007 American Public Health Association’s (APHA) Annual Meeting

Washington, D.C.
November 3-7, 2007

The American Public Health Association’s (APHA)Annual Meeting & Exposition is the premier Public Health Educational Forum! Learn from the experts in the field, hear about cutting edge research and exceptional best practices, discover the latest public health products and services, and share your public health experience with your peers. The world of public health is in continual motion, and there is no better time to stay abreast of the research and learn about emerging issues.

The APHA Annual Meeting & Exposition is the oldest and largest gathering of public health professionals in the world, attracting more than 13,000 national and international physicians, administrators, nurses, educators, researchers, epidemiologists, and related health specialists. APHA’s meeting program addresses current and emerging health science, policy, and practice issues in an effort to prevent disease and promote health. APHA has a world of public health in store for you. For more information go to this site.

22nd Annual Sustainable Agriculture Conference

November 9 - 11, 2007
600+ farmers, educators, extension agents, consumers, and agriculture professionals for a weekend of workshops, wonderful meals, inspiring keynote address, and loads of fun! More info to come - mark your calendars and stay tuned! For more information visit www.carolinafarmstewards.org.