Update from Wood County: Get Active Makes Progress in 2011

Get Active Makes Progress in 2011, by DaNita Carlson for The Wisconsin Rapids Tribune

The close of 2011 marks nearly two years since Wood County became one of 50 communities across the country to receive a $2.3 million Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) grant.

During the past year, the CPPW national obesity prevention program, known locally as Get Active Wood County, has made tremendous progress toward attaining its goal of making healthy eating and active living an easy choice in Wood County.

Led by the Wood County Health Department, the Get Active coalition of local businesses, schools and nonprofit organizations has successfully implemented numerous initiatives focused on nutrition and physical activity that have, and will continue to have, an impact on local residents well into the future. Some of these initiatives include:

» For the second year, all six Wood County public school districts and YouthNet offered Fit-tastic, an after-school program that emphasizes healthy eating and active living. The program served more than 225 students during fall/winter 2011.

» All Wood County public school districts took part in the second year of Farm to School monthly taste tests. Students had the opportunity to taste test locally grown produce that included apples, watermelon, cantaloupe, slicer tomatoes, cherry and grape tomatoes and carrots. Taste tests will continue in school cafeterias monthly through June.

» Seventy-five percent of farmers markets in Wood County now accept FoodShare. The program bridged a gap between FoodShare participants and local farmers, helping reconnect participants to fresh, locally produced food and farmers to federal dollars. More than $4,000 FoodShare dollars were spent at the Wood County Farmers Market at Rapids Mall during the 2011 season.

» Seventeen businesses in Wood County are in the process of implementing healthy food worksite policies. Ten of these businesses also are updating worksite wellness policies that promote employee physical activity.

» Fifteen Wood County restaurants implemented, or are in the process of implementing a Smart Meal program where they label their menus with meals lower in calories, fat and sodium; and higher in fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

» Eighteen childcare centers and four Head Start centers throughout Wood County received child care curriculums that promote nutrition and physical activity. In addition, they are receiving assistance and support to update wellness policies that incorporate more physical activity and better nutrition into children's daily routines.

» Fourteen new Wood County facilities opened their doors as Shared Use Facilities, which allow community members to walk in or use space for physical activity or nutrition education.

The Get Active coalition would like to thank the entire Wood County community for advocating for and supporting all of the many Get Active initiatives. But the hard work can't stop now. With the start of 2012 comes the opportunity for everyone to make an effort toward sustaining the Get Active mission of creating a healthier Wood County.

The incentive to do so is great. Right now, two-thirds of Wood County adults are overweight or obese, and childhood obesity rates are higher than ever before. Obesity and other chronic illnesses related to a lack of physical activity and an unhealthy diet place substantial stress on the local economy, our community and all of us as individuals. Together, we can make a difference. Make it your New Year's resolution to Get Active, Wood County, and Cause. Community. Change. Get involved at getactivewoodcounty.org.

This is a great example of leveraging earned media as well. 

Link.

Childhood obesity best battled in schools, research finds, in Scientific American.

Obesity rate falls for New York schoolkids

In last week's New York Times. 

The number of obese New York City schoolchildren fell by 5.5 percent over five years, federal and city officials said Thursday, offering a glimmer of optimism about one of the country’s intractable health scourges.

The decline, documented by annual fitness exams given to most of the city’s kindergarten through eighth-grade students, was the biggest reported by any large city. Over all, the rate of obesity dropped in New York City to 207 children per 1,000 in the 2010-11 school year, down from 219 five years earlier, meaning that 20.7 percent were still considered obese.

“This comes after decades of relentless increases,” Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the city’s health commissioner, said Thursday. While the 5.5 percent drop may seem slight, he said, “What’s impressive is the fact that it’s falling at all.”

The results, published Thursday in a report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, showed that the declines in obesity were sharply higher among middle-class children than among poor children. They were also higher among white and Asian children compared with black and Hispanic children, and among very young children — those entering kindergarten or first grade — compared with older children.

Still, the drops held up to some extent across all grades, races and economic levels.

“Because of coordinated, sustained action I am happy to say our children are benefiting from our campaign against obesity, which has plagued communities here in New York and across the nation for nearly three decades,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said.

Mr. Bloomberg said the 5.5 percent drop translated into roughly 6,500 fewer obese children in the public schools. He said that an overwhelming majority of parents think their children are fit and at a healthy weight, but that “the facts tell a different story.”

Dr. Farley attributed the progress partly to the city’s aggressive advertising campaign against sugary sodas, which he said may have altered what parents were providing to their children. The city has also tried to add healthier options to school lunch menus, enacted strict rules on the calorie and sugar content of snacks and drinks in school vending machines, and even put limits on bake sales, a move that caused some grumbling.

Buoyed by the results, city officials also announced Thursday that the restrictions on school vending machines were being expanded to machines in all city buildings, and that they were forming a multiagency task force to recommend further initiatives to combat obesity. Dr. Farley also noted that salad bars were now in cafeterias at many schools, including Public School 218, near Yankee Stadium, where the mayor and the commissioner announced the results at a news conference.

...

The decline in obesity was documented by the city in FitnessGrams, annual physical education tests that are now completed by most of the city’s kindergarten through eighth-grade students.

As a follow-up question, the New York Times asks, what has your school been doing to encourage healthy habits in students?

Childhood obesity work featured on Wisconsin Public Television!

Live54218, the obesity prevention group in Brown County, WI, was featured on Wisconsin Public Television's "Teen Connection" on Wednesday evening! You can view a 10-minute clip from this feature on YouTube:

Farm to School Summit - Register Now!

Farm to School is growing rapidly and it is time to share lessons of the many unique programs in this state, as well as the trends throughout the region and the United States.

Please join us for the first Farm to School Summit in Wisconsin – January 25th, 2012, in conjunction with the WI Local Foods Network conference on the 26th and 27th in Delavan, WI.

For more information and to register visit the Farm to School Summit page.

Top Ten Tips for Evaluating Evidence-Based Initiatives - upcoming webinar

The next webinar in Wisconsin’s Empowering Coalitions for Community Change series will be held on Thursday, December 1 from 11:00am – 12:00pm CT.

“Top Ten” Tips for Evaluating Evidence-based Initiatives

Presenter: Mary Michaud, Health Forward Consulting

Mary Michaud will share her “Top Ten” Evaluation Tips. Join us for ideas on how to connect with current evidence and how to evaluate initiatives in ways that are practical, useful and meaningful for stakeholders.

To join the webinar, simply click the link above. This and other webinar links (past and upcoming) may also be found HERE on the NPAO Program website.

Please forward to anyone who may be interested.

If you have any questions or technical difficulties, please contact Jordan.bingham@Wisconsin.gov.

Make the right choice the easy choice.

Interview with Alan Balch, vice president of the Preventative Health Partnership on the intersection between public health and environmental health:

What do you see as the greatest commonalities between the preventative health movement and the environmental sustainability movement?

There has long been a clear intersection between public health and environmental health, especially when you consider issues like air pollution, water pollution, and land pollution. Most of the federal and state laws in those areas are first and foremost designed to protect people's health. In terms of the sustainability movement, I think those issues have become increasingly more congruent with the preventive health agenda in recent years.

The big push now in preventive and public health is "healthy communities." Numerous organizations from the government, academic, nonprofit, and private sectors are rallying around this theme. Although the specific tactics being pursued at the local level vary from place to place, some activities that the preventative health movement has in common with the sustainability movement include:

• Local fruit and vegetable production and consumption through home gardens, farmers markets, and farm-to-school programs;
  


• creation and expansion of bike lanes, sidewalks, and walking paths to create "walkable cities, schools, and shopping";
  


• reducing or eliminating the use of toxic chemicals in cleaning products in public institutions; and
  


• preservation or creation of parks and open space for multiple use.
  

In your view, what are the most effective practical ways to empower people to make the “right” choices, whether for their personal health and well-being, or for the environment? Does conventional advertising work, or do we need to adopt new tactics?


The answer is as simple conceptually as it is elusive from a practical perspective: make the right choice the easy choice. We've created an economic culture that is based on immediate gratification, convenience, and irrationality. Many people want to be more conscious consumers both for their personal health and environmental health, but those issues are not necessarily top of mind at the point of consumption and, if they are, it might not be readily apparent how to exercise those preferences quickly and in the context of other factors that drive consumer behavior.

Messaging or advertising is not effective unless it is used to drive people to resources, tools, and products that make it easier for them to express their long-term preferences for deferred benefits like better health.

To me, there are four interrelated strategies for creating real change, and I think the geo-political focus for these should be at the local and community level and not the federal level:

Built environment: look for opportunities to change or create permanent infrastructure in a way that supports the behaviors you want changed or reinforced.

Policy: look for opportunities to create policies at the government and corporate level that either make it easier to make the right choice or harder to make the less preferable choice.

Programs: institute programs that provide people with the capacity or pathway to making the right choice.

Partner: find other active groups to work with who have a similar or same agenda even if their concerns are different.

Impacting Health Policy webinar

The next webinar in Wisconsin’s Empowering Coalitions for Community Change series will be held on Thursday, November 17 from 11:00am – 12:00pm CT.

Impacting Health Policy by Building Relationships with your Policymakers

Presenter: Steve Elliott, Policy & Grassroots Specialist, HealthFirst Wisconsin

Steve Elliott joins us again to share practical strategies for educating policymakers about best-practice policies for prevention of obesity and chronic disease. Whether you work at the local or state level, Steve’s tips will help you and your coalition colleagues to initiate and sustain relationships with policymakers, positioning yourselves as the valuable content experts that you are!

To join the webinar, simply click the link above. This and other webinar links (past and upcoming) may also be found HERE on the NPAO Program website.

If you have any questions or technical difficulties, please contact Jordan.Bingham@Wisconsin.gov.

Cooking and Public Health: How to Help Families Discover Good Food on The Atlantic

Conversation with Maryland Secretary of Health and Mental Hygiene Dr. Joshua Sharfstein and cookbook author Sally Sampson on a new state initiative to improve healthy eating among Maryland families.

We've made it a priority to use foods that are accessible and affordable and recipes that are simple and kid friendly. We use recipes from all different cultures and we don't beat anyone up with our message of healthy eating: We strive to make it fun and hope that the rest follows from there. So my guess is that many people -- not just you -- can get their children to eat healthy foods by getting them involved in the process rather than lecturing to them about what they should and shouldn't be eating.

Public health, prevention, and proposed cuts to food and nutrition programs.

Falling Through the Cracks in the Deficit Debate on The Huffington Post

On proposed cuts to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children:

WIC is a short-term preventative public health nutrition program designed to influence lifetime nutrition and health behaviors in a targeted, high-risk population. WIC-approved foods are selected for their nutritional value to supplement the nutrients found lacking in the diets of low-income populations. As one WIC participant in Scott County, IA stated, WIC's nutrition education has, "laid the foundation for healthy eating habits for years to come."

With the nation's obesity rates continuing to rise, and two-thirds of adults and nearly one-third of children and teens currently obese or overweight and at increased risk for over 20 major diseases, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, now is not the time for Congress to consider funding cuts to WIC.

Should Congress fail to successfully meet its agreed upon deficit reduction target of $1.2 trillion, WIC could be hit with dramatic funding cuts resulting in more than 700,000 vulnerable mothers and young children being cut off from critical WIC nutrition services, depriving young children the opportunity of a healthy start on life, taking away purchasing power in local economies, and increasing the nation's long-term healthcare costs. Moreover, deficit reduction targets for future years could see further dramatic cuts to WIC.

A serious attempt to grapple with deficit reduction begins with sound investments in the health and well-being of our nation’s families and communities, not with slashing vital food and nutrition programs, like WIC, that contribute to long-term health savings, workforce productivity, the nation’s competitiveness in a global economy, and national security.

Register here for Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environment's November 16 webinar on "The Role of Community Engagement in Creating Safe Places to Play." The webinar will begin at 10:30am.

Food Day webinars archived.

Catch up with any Wisconsin's Food Day webinars that you missed at this link.

From October 10

What you need to know about the farm bill – Important updates and information related to community and regional food systems

From October 24

Finding a common ground – How can agriculture and public health work together? Ideas from the CDC and USDA

From November 7

Where do we go from here in Wisconsin? – Coordinating activities to promote public health through food system innovations

#4. If You’re Not Hungry Enough to Eat an Apple, Then You’re Probably Not Hungry

Michael Pollan has released a new illustrated version of Food Rules. Read more at CivilEats.

School wellness policy experiences from D.C. parent.

Check out a great blog post over at The Slow Cook capturing one parent's role in helping to revise wellness policies in his daughter's school district.

Over the last several months I’ve been meeting with D.C. school officials and now it can be revealed: We have a new wellness policy that prohibits flavored milk and sugary cereals, requires that all children have at least 30 minutes to eat their food at lunch, limits classroom celebrations to just one per month and mandates that all food served on school grounds–including vending machines, school stores, bake sales and other fundraisers–comply with HealthierUS School Challenge gold-level standards.

Congress in 2004 mandated that all public schools must have a wellness policy in place that sets goals for nutrition education and physical activity and establishes guidelines for the food available during the school days. The federal law also requires that schools involve parents and students in developing the wellness policy. But it doesn’t give precise directions on how this is to be done, so parents in too many cases have been frustrated in their efforts to make wellness policy changes.

The policy is supposed to be updated every three years.

Fortunately for us in the District of Columbia, we now have a food services director–Jeffrey Mills–who would like nothing better than serve the kind of food Alice Waters would be proud of. I was pleasantly surprised at how open the process of revising our wellness policy was–even though I didn’t get everything I wanted.


[...]

As we are learning, however, drafting a policy and seeing it actually take effect can be two different things. For instance, in our last meeting we learned that while schools are required to provide at least 30 minutes of physical education for all primary grades, and 45 minutes in senior schools, some principals have instructed their PE teachers instead to have the kids read, to boost test scores. In fact, the school officials at the table urged me and other community members that the best way to address problems like that may be for us to draft a letter to the schools chancellor. Apparently, working up the chain of command doesn’t necessarily get results.

Yet under “Healthy Schools,” kids beginning in 2014 are supposed to be getting five times as much PE–150 hours per week in elementary school, 225 minutes per week in grades six through eight.

Similarly, although the wellness policy states that every child should have at least 30 minutes to eat lunch “after the last student passes through the line,” I don’t know of any school where that currently is the case. Especially in schools with high enrollment of low-income children, who tend to take the federally subsidized meal rather than bringing one from home, those lunch lines can be very long. In my daughter’s elementary school last year, for instance, the lunch period was only 30 minutes long, and the last kid who went through the line typically did not have much more than 15 minutes to eat.

Next on the agenda for the wellness committee may be figuring out how the school can arrange training sessions for staff so that they actually know what’s in the policy and what they need to do to comply with it. Federal rules require that the wellness policy be distributed to staff and made easily available to the public, such as by posting it on school websites and keeping copies for public inspection in the school office.

Other highlights: nutrition education that integrated into other content areas such as math, science, language arts and socials studies and teach “media literacy with an emphasis on food marketing.” Schools must provide at least 20 minutes of recess daily, and it should come before lunch “whenever possible.” Schools are required to increase participation in meal programs through a “coordinated, comprehensive outreach plan” that builds community coalitions and may include after-school cooking clubs for families, parent workshops and community/school gardens.

Under the federal mandate, we are also required to figure out a way to collect data and masure the impact of implementing the wellness policy. In other words, we still have our work cut out for us.

Obesity Prevention Policy in Wisconsin webinar.

The next webinar in Wisconsin’s Empowering Coalitions for Community Change series will be held on Thursday, November 3 from 11:00am – 12:00pm CST.

Obesity Prevention Policy in Wisconsin: Key Priorities and Coordination of State and Local Efforts

Presenters:

• Melissa Horn, Wisconsin Government Relations Director, American Heart Association


• Mary Pesik, Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity Program Coordinator, Wisconsin Division of Public Health


• Kyle Pfister, Policy Coordinator, Wisconsin Clearinghouse for Prevention Resources

Presenters will introduce key policy priorities for obesity prevention in Wisconsin. Join us to learn about effective tactics that can be applied to educate policymakers and build community support for high-impact policy change.

To join the webinar, click here.

New Rudd Center report on sugar-sweetened beverage marketing to children and teens.

The health consequences of consuming sugary drinks are well known. It is not surprising, therefore, that groups such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Institute of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and other groups have said that consumption is too high and needs to come down.

What has been missing from this picture is a detailed analysis of how the industry markets these products to the most vulnerable segment of our population: children. It is important to know this in order to help establish government policies on whether children should be protected from this influence, and also test whether the industry is holding true to its promises to market less to this age group.

[ . . . ]

Our group at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University has just released the most extensive analysis ever of the marketing of sugary drinks to children and teenagers. This new report found that children are exposed to more -- not less -- advertising for sugary drinks than they were several years ago, and that the companies are finding new and sophisticated ways to reach youth.

Our study looked at 14 beverage companies and examined the nutritional quality of nearly 600 products, including full-calorie soda, energy drinks, fruit drinks, flavored water, sports drinks, and iced teas, as well as diet energy drinks and diet children's fruit drinks. Some key findings:

• Companies have shifted from traditional media such as television ads to newer forms that engage youth, often without their parents' awareness, through rewards for purchasing sugary drinks, community events, cause-related marketing, promotions, product placements, social media, and smartphones.


• The companies package their products in ways that can make it difficult for parents and children to decipher what is really in the product. Fruit-drink packages, for instance, typically have pictures of real fruit, even though these drinks contain no more than 5 percent real fruit juice. Many parents and children are unaware that fruit drinks can be just as high in calories and added sugar as soda.


• More than half of all sugary drinks and energy drinks boast of having positive ingredients on their packages. Sixty-four percent feature "all-natural" or "real" ingredients, sometimes "real" sugar. Parents may see these as healthier products than they really are.


• Two thirds of brands appear during prime-time programming through product placements, totaling nearly 2,000 appearances in 2010. Coca-Cola classic accounted for three-quarters of brand appearances seen by children.

Companies target children in new and innovative ways, but sugary drinks continue to be heavily promoted to young people on television and radio, despite industry pledges. We found that from 2008 to 2010, children's and teens' exposure to full-calorie soda ads on television doubled. This increase was driven by the Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper Snapple groups.

There is no doubt that children and teens need protection from the masterful and ubiquitous marketing by companies of products known to increase risk for obesity and diabetes. Industry's promise to behave better seems empty when the evidence shows they are exposing children even more to messages promoting high-sugar drinks.

What can be done? Federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration have the ability to step in to help corral marketing and labeling practices, but there must be the political will. There are positive signs that this is occurring, but action will be accelerated by public demands for change. Parents, health professionals, and any concerned citizen can write or call local, state, and national elected officials asking that something be done. In addition, the state attorneys general have authority to address marketing practices and have shown increasing interest in addressing issues such as childhood obesity.

Read more at The Atlantic.

Students and campus food workers unite for Food Day.

This Food Day story illuminates our national food conversation from several angles, from fresh food preparation to food insecurity and food justice:

"They took our knives and gave us scissors to open bags of frozen food. I want my knives back so I can cook again." That's what a kitchen worker at a prominent university told me recently at one of a dozen of gatherings around the country convened by our union, Unite Here. The idea was to bring food service workers and college students together to discuss the intersection of food and work in anticipation of Food Day, a national day designed to "bring together Americans from all walks of life to push for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way."

. . .

"Food is love," said one cook at a university in Chicago. "Bringing in packaged food ... is sort of an insult. We actually want to chop, we want to make sauces and make our own stocks, we want to make food with our hands."

But this widely felt sentiment is only one reason we're drawing attention to food service workers on Food Day. After spending so much time in campus kitchens, we know that workers are important allies in transforming our food system and we want to bring that to the foreground of this important national event. They're allies in part because they have so much at stake: Food workers are among those most affected by the food crisis. They are frequently underpaid and they suffer from food insecurity and diet-related illnesses at alarming rates.

Read more at Grist.org.

To mark the first-ever Food Day, we’ll take a look at food insecurity in the United States; the potential impact of cuts to nutrition programs, food safety programs and support for farmers producing fruits and vegetables in the federal budget; thoughts on Denmark’s “fat tax” from Marion Nestle; smartphone apps for foodies; spray-painted commentary on fast-food menu offerings; and a laugh brought to you by The Colbert Report.

Good: Empty Pantry: The scary truth about food insecurity (infographic)

SlowFoodUSA: Budget cuts could be a recipe for change or disaster

Food Politics: Marion Nestle on Denmark’s “fat tax”

Eating Rules: Foodie Smartphone Apps
- Profiles 27 smartphone apps that will enable you to do everything from scan barcodes to receive complete information on nutrition, pesticide exposure and food additives to where to find seasonal produce in your area to searchable recipe databases you can access from the grocery aisle.

Burger King Billboard Bombed with Diabetes Graffiti:

Stephen Colbert objects to MyPlate: “Americans don’t use plates anymore!”

And don’t forget to check out today’s installment in Wisconsin FOOD DAY 2011 webinar series at 3:00PM CST!

Fall webinar series... Strategic Recruitment: Engaging Community and Mobilizing Supporters

The next webinar in the Empowering Coalitions for Community Change series will be held on Thursday, October 20 from 11:00a.m. – 12:00pm CT. **Please note the time change**

Strategic Recruitment: Engaging Community and Mobilizing Supporters
Presenter: Steve Elliott, Policy and Grassroots Specialist, HealthFirst Wisconsin

Join us to gain insight and useful tips on strategic recruitment for effective and sustained coalition work. Steve will cover such topics as:
- identifying and reaching out to key partners
- assigning roles to maximize strengths
- keeping a database of supporters
- engaging those most affected by the health issue(s) at hand

To join the webinar, simply click the link above. This and other webinar links (past and upcoming) may also be found HERE on the NPAO Program website. Look for the “new” logo next to upcoming webinars.

Parents urged to limit TV for youngest" in the New York Times:

Parents of infants and toddlers should limit the time their children spend in front of televisions, computers, self-described educational games and even grown-up shows playing in the background, the American Academy of Pediatrics warned on Tuesday. Video screen time provides no educational benefits for children under age 2 and leaves less room for activities that do, like interacting with other people and playing, the group said.

The report also "makes clear that there is no such thing as an educational program for such young children, and that leaving the TV on as background noise, as many households do, distracts both children and adults."

Update on Food Day

You can read a column written by Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest at The Atlantic.

The way our food is grown, transported, processed, marketed, and ultimately eaten is not sustainable -- for the environment or our health. Diet, together with a sedentary lifestyle, cause obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, and cancers that result in several hundred thousand deaths each year. Raising livestock uses enormous amounts of energy to grow and transport feed; cattle feedlots stink up vast areas; and the animal manure often pollutes waterways. The animals generally endure miserable conditions, as do the packinghouse workers.

My organization, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, has long fought for consumer protections -- food labeling, vigilant food safety programs, and more-healthful foods. I have to admit that we, like most advocacy organizations, are usually toiling within our "health" silo. But because reforming America's food system is such a daunting task, organizations need to climb out of their silos and start collaborating with one another to make faster progress. Health groups should work with farm-animal welfare groups. Anti-hunger activists should work with sustainable agriculture advocates. Nutrition advocates should work with environmentalists. While those disparate groups don't see eye to eye on everything, there are countless opportunities where they can build on each other's strengths...

Keep adding any events you have planned for Food Day to the Food Day map!

Check out Fed Up With Lunch, a blog that tracks a public school teacher's adventures in eating school lunch in the cafeteria with her students. Starting in 2010, the anonymous blogger ("Mrs. Q") photographed each day's lunch offerings, a creative way of drawing attention to school nutrition and child health.

Great interview with Slow Food USA President Josh Viertel

Q: What are your top three wish list items for fixing our food system?

A: First, that people cook together, and that it be fun. Second, it needs to become easier to buy real ingredients than to buy processed junk. Third, we have to make the economics work. We have to be able to grow food sustainably, while paying the farmer a living wage. And that food has to be sold at a price that’s affordable to someone else who’s making a living wage. A person should be able to grow and sell food and make a living wage without having their customers only be wealthy people. Everyone should able to eat that kind of food every day.

Statewide Farm to School evaluation report released.

Guest post from Amanda Knitter, who is coordinating the ARRA state Farm to School grant:

Check out the new WI Farm to School Evaluation Report. Kids who participate in Farm to School eat 20% more fruits and vegetables. This is a huge improvement considering the research study also found that 25% of students’ lunch trays did not have any fruits or veggies on them at all.

For easy ways to take action and support the growing Farm to School movement in WI, please visit HealthinPractice.org. You can also find evaluation report talking points, a draft letter to the editor, and other resources available at that link.

Resources from today's webinar on Sustainability Planning.

If you missed Mary Michaud's Planning for Sustainability: Building Agility, Community Leverage and Strategic Learning webinar, you can view an archived version at this link.

Here are the resources for that Mary provided at the end of her presentation:

Building effective coalitions
• Coalitions Work
• CDC Sustainability Guide
• Trent T, Chavis D. Scope, Scale, and Sustainability: What It Takes to Create Lasting
Community Change. Foundation Review, Winter 2009. (Also see Community Science, Inc.)
• Tom Wolff Coalition Building
• National Opinion Research Center. Developing a Conceptual Framework to Assess the
Sustainability of Community Coalitions Post-Federal Funding. Jan 2010.

Innovation, networks and healthy communities
• Knight Foundation: Connected Citizens: The power, potential and peril of networks. 2011.
• IDEO’s Axioms for starting disruptive new businesses. Fast Co Design. 2011. Or Google
IDEO Human-centered design.
• FSG Social Impact Advisors
• California Endowment. Why place matters: Building the movement for healthy communities. 2007.

Local examples
• Video: Horizons Initiative, UMN Extension
• Polk County, WI, Physical Activity and Nutrition Coalition
• Kalihi Valley story
• Video: New York Interfaith Food Justice Coalition

Framing messages
• Unnatural Causes
• Frameworks Institute

Leadership resources
• Healthy Wisconsin Leadership Institute
• Pew Charitable Trusts. Inventing Civic Solutions: A how-to guide on launching and sustaining
successful community programs

Link for tomorrow's webinar on sustainability planning.

The next webinar in the Empowering Coalitions for Community Change series will be held tomorrow, Thursday, October 6 from 11:00a.m. – 12:00pm CT. **Please note the time change**

Link: Planning for Sustainability: Building Agility, Community Leverage and Strategic Learning with Mary Michaud of Health Forward Consulting

Join us for useful and practical ideas to keep your partnership strong and focused through the ups and downs of funding, politics and community changes. With a focus on building and maintaining key relationships, Mary will highlight great examples from around the country and right here in Wisconsin. Participants will come away with an enhanced ability to recognize the keys to sustainability and prioritize the essentials. Maintaining your coalition’s energy will seem less like a chore and more like an adventure!

Mark your calendars!

The YMCA of Dane County will be hosting a Healthy Living Summit on Thursday, November 17, at Monona Terrace in downtown Madison. You can find registration information and additional details here.

I believe in growing local for healthy bodies, communities and natural spaces.

The New Agtivists: FoodCorps Foot Soldiers on Grist

Interviews with three FoodCorps service members about working to change the food system.

Q. What makes all this hard work worthwhile?
A. I think it really hit me on my first day in the school cafeteria with table full of zucchinis. We had samples of a roasted zucchini recipe and I was doing basic veggie identification. I realized that when kids have freedom to engage with food experiences -- where it's not a requirement, where it's a choice -- they take a much more active role in their food decisions. I noticed that kids already had stories and experiences of their own. Even the second and third graders would come to me saying, "My mom's zucchini are twice that size."
Sometimes just trying things under different circumstances makes a huge difference.

I feel like I'm this ambassador, or a link in the web between all these people who are connected through food but don't always get to talk to each other.

Being able to share the stories of food -- that's one of the most rewarding parts of the job. We're all working to improve it, but sharing stories and connecting the community around the same goals -- that makes it feel so relevant.

Active Breaks ideas for middle schoolers

Check out North Carolina's Eat Smart, Move More "energizers," or active breaks, designed for middle school students! These energizers were mentioned on last week's Active Schools teleconference


Resources for elementary schoolers can be found here.

Wisconsin FOOD DAY 2011 Webinar Series

SAVE THE DATE(S)!

All webinars start at 3:00 PM CST. Registration and login information will be sent prior to each webinar. Contact fooddaywi@gmail.com with questions or to request webinar registration information.

Monday, October 10
What you need to know about the farm bill – Important updates and information related to community and regional food systems

Monday, October 24
Finding a common ground – How can agriculture and public health work together? Ideas from the CDC and USDA

Monday, November 7
Where do we go from here in Wisconsin? – Coordinating activities to promote public health through food system innovations

Nutrition and physical activity news digest.

Can a National Food Day Convince Americans to Start Eating Right?
The Atlantic
September 15, 2011
In essence, Food Day is the "Stone Soup" of the food movement: Center for Science in the Public Interest puts the day out there, like a kettle with a stone in it, offering a chance to turn your carrot and my onion and her urban agriculture program and his hunger relief efforts into something remarkable. If groups and individuals organize thousands of Food Day events, big and small, we'll all start to understand not just that public health, sustainability, and food justice are related, but how they are related. It will help us begin to make changes in our own lives and our community's and country's institutions.

Why Americans can’t afford to eat healthy – The real reason Big Macs are cheaper than more nutritious alternatives? Government subsidies
Salon.com
Not surprisingly, the subsidies have manufactured a price inequality that helps junk food undersell nutritious-but-unsubsidized foodstuffs like fruits and vegetables. The end result is that recession-battered consumers are increasingly forced by economic circumstance to “choose” the lower-priced junk food that their taxes support. Corn — which is processed into the junk-food staple corn syrup and which feeds the livestock that produce meat — exemplifies the scheme. “Over the past decade, the federal government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop … artificially low,” reports Time magazine. “That’s why McDonald’s can sell you a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for around $5 — a bargain.”

Offer of soda-industry funds fell flat, as it should have
Philadelphia Inquirer
September 14, 2011
Discusses Philadelphia mayor’s rationale for rejecting funds from soda industry for an anti-obesity program. "It seems to me that accepting money from the beverage industry to fight obesity would be like taking money from the NRA to fight gun violence or from the tobacco industry for smoking cessations," Mayor Nutter said. "I mean, it's ludicrous."

Playground and Park Design: Getting Our Children to Exercise
The Atlantic
September 27, 2011
The current epidemic of obesity among our children and adolescents calls for creative, multidisciplinary approaches to address the problem. Improved nutrition at home, at school, and in the community is critical. Increased exercise is similarly important, but it is well known that the amount and quality of physical exercise declines as young children grow up and continues to decline into adulthood. A recent study looked at the types and amount of exercise that kids engaged in in public parks and offers some insights as to how to improve the physical activity levels of our youth through improved park planning.

Let's Make Let's Move! Even Better
The Atlantic
September 27, 2011
With plenty of room for more food access, farmers' markets continue to provide the most inexpensive, culturally sensitive, and effective option to get fresh produce into America's seriously underserved urban and rural communities. These markets provide jobs and fertile ground for inventive, entrepreneurial approaches to launching food businesses that require low investment -- and can have high impact, creating new jobs and equity opportunities to low-wage workers.

Harvard plate v. USDA MyPlate: an improvement?
Food Politics by Marion Nestle
September 15, 2011
Harvard School of Public Health students adapted the USDA MyPlate to offer more specific guidelines for healthful eating.

Wisconsin Receives $23.5 Million Grant for Healthy Transformation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 27, 2011

Contact:
Julie Swanson, Wisconsin Clearinghouse for Prevention Resources
● Office - 608.262.7469
● Mobile - 608-206-9117
● jswanson@uhs.wisc.edu

Wisconsin Receives $23.5 Million Grant for Healthy Transformation

MADISON, Wis -- The Wisconsin Clearinghouse for Prevention Resources, a unit of University Health Services at UW–Madison, announced today that they have received a $23.5 million Federal grant to make it easier for Wisconsin residents to be and stay healthy.

The project will address public demand for proven prevention strategies that decrease obesity and tobacco use across Wisconsin. It will also increase early screening for chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer. The award, called the Community Transformation Grant, is granted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“Wisconsin’s public health movement rallied around this application, and will be a powerful force in creating a healthier Wisconsin going forward,” said Tom Sieger, UHS director of prevention services, “The grant will help improve the overall health and well-being of Wisconsin residents, lower the rates of life-threatening chronic diseases, and bring down healthcare costs for us all.”

The award will be spread over five years with be distributed to local community-based coalitions in 10 Wisconsin cities and a statewide coalition of public health partners including the YMCA, Health First Wisconsin, UW Department of Nutritional Sciences, the Wisconsin Cancer Council, and many others.

"YMCAs across the state of Wisconsin are thrilled to collaborate and help make this healthy transformation happen for Wisconsin” said Carrie Wall, President and CEO of the YMCA of Dane County. “Not only does the Y help kids move more and educate them about making healthy choices, but we are also committed to working with community leaders to institute policy and systems changes that increase physical activity and improve access to healthy foods."

For more than 35 years, the Wisconsin Clearinghouse for Prevention Resources has advanced public health and prevention efforts in the state through accurate, up-to-date information, training and technical assistance to help Wisconsin youth, families, schools and communities in the promotion of healthy practices and the prevention of injury and disease.

In keeping with the Wisconsin Idea, the organization strives to make information about environmental strategies, research-based programs, and new technologies and practices available to residents beyond the university and throughout the state.

###

• Information on how the Prevention and Public Health Fund is helping to promote prevention in every state



• Information about the Community Transformation Grants, including a complete list of 61 funded states and communities



• Information on how the Community Transformation Grants will address health disparities

We need to go back and give people safe ways to get out there, to be active, to get where they need to go.

Bike Infrastructure Hits Congressional Speed Bumps on NPR's All Things Considered.

This NPR story discusses the need for cities and communities to accommodate multimodal transportation, and the challenges facing bike and ped advocates across the country.

David Goldberg of the advocacy group Transportation for America calls this is a "watershed moment," as communities revert to an earlier time when roads weren't owned by cars.

"We stripped [roads] down to be essentially sewers for cars, and for years we thought the throughput of vehicles was the be-all and end-all," he says. "There's been a significant change in recent years where cities, towns, large and small, are taking a very different approach, and they're going back and reclaiming a little bit of that landscape."

It's not just bike lanes that are funded by the transportation enhancements program. Pedestrian improvements such as sidewalks and better-marked crosswalks are also funded. In part, Goldberg says, the money is being spent to reduce pedestrian deaths, most of which occur on roads built to earlier federal guidelines without proper crosswalks, for example, that are unsafe for pedestrians and other users.

"This is a national issue of having created safety problems in community after community, where we need to go back and give people safe ways to get out there, to be active, to get where they need to go," he says, "and this is not a frill, this is a very critical piece of our infrastructure."

It's not clear what lies ahead for the transportation enhancements program in the long term. Republicans in Congress want to give states the flexibility to opt out of it, and that worries safety advocates who say that without prodding from Washington, some states will focus only on cars to the detriment of everyone else on the road.

Links for upcoming communications webinars

Get the Message Out: Practical Communication Planning
September 8 at 1:00PM
Spencer Straub, Tobacco Prevention and Control Program Media and Communications Coordinator
Emily Dieringer, re:TH!NK Winnebago County Coalition Coordinator

Inspire Action: Messaging Principles that Work
September 22 at 1:00PM
Sarah Apple, UW Clearinghouse for Prevention Resources Communications and Training Coordinator


These webinars are open to everyone, so please feel free to share with colleagues from other program areas!

United Nations to consider the effects of food marketing on chronic disease
from Marion Nestle's Food Politics

In what Bloomberg News terms an “epidemic battle,” food companies are doing everything they can to prevent the United Nations from issuing a statement that says anything about how food marketing promotes obesity and related chronic diseases.

The U.N. General Assembly meets in New York on September 19 and 20 to develop a global response to the obesity-related increase in non-communicable, chronic diseases (cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, type 2 diabetes) now experienced by both rich and poor countries throughout the world.

As the Bloomberg account explains,

Company officials join political leaders and health groups to come up with a
plan to reverse the rising tide of non- communicable diseases….On the table are
proposals to fight obesity, cut tobacco and alcohol use and expand access to
lifesaving drugs in an effort to tackle unhealthy diets and lifestyles that
drive three of every five deaths worldwide. At stake for the makers of snacks,
drinks, cigarettes and drugs is a market with combined sales of more than $2
trillion worldwide last year.

Commenting on the collaboration of food companies in this effort:

“It’s kind of like letting Dracula advise on blood bank security,” said Jorge Alday, associate director of policy with World Lung Foundation, which lobbies for tobacco control.

The lobbying, to understate the matter, is intense. On one side are food corporations with a heavy financial stake in selling products in developing countries. Derek Yach, for example, a senior executive of PepsiCo, argues in the British Medical Journal that it’s too simplistic to recommend nutritional changes to reduce chronic disease risk. [Of course it is, but surely cutting down on fast food, junk food, and sodas ought to be a good first step?]

On the other side are public health advocates concerned about conflicts of interest in the World Health Organization. So is the United Nations’ special rapporteur for the right to food, Olivier De Schutter. Mr. De Schutter writes that the “chance to crack down on bad diets must not be missed.”

On the basis of several investigative visits to developing countries, De Schutter calls for “the adoption of a host of initiatives, such as taxing unhealthy products and regulating harmful food marketing practices…Voluntary guidelines are not enough. World leaders must not bow to industry pressure.”

If we are serious about tackling the rise of cancer and heart disease, we need to make ambitious, binding commitments to tackle one of the root causes – the food that we eat.

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2004 Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health must be translated into concrete action: it is unacceptable that when lives are at stake, we go no further than soft, promotional measures that ultimately rely on consumer choice, without addressing the supply side of the food chain.

It is crucial for world leaders to counter food industry efforts to sell
unbalanced processed products and ready-to-serve meals too rich in trans fats
and saturated fats, salt and sugars. Food advertising is proven to have a strong
impact on children, and must be strictly regulated in order to avoid the
development of bad eating habits early in life.

A comprehensive strategy on combating bad diets should also address the
farm policies which make some types of food more available than
others…Currently, agricultural policies encourage the production of grains, rich
in carbohydrates but relatively poor in micronutrients, at the expense of the
production of fruits and vegetables.

We need to question how subsidies are targeted and improve access to
markets for the most nutritious foods.…The public health consequences are
dramatic, and they affect disproportionately those with the lowest incomes.

In 2004, the U.N. caved in to pressures from food companies and weakened its guidelines and recommendations. The health situation is worse now and affects people in developing as well as industrialized countries. Let’s hope the General Assembly puts health above politics this time.

Marion Nestle on the new school nutrition law from the USDA.

"New School Nutrition Law Takes Youths' Health to Heart" at FoodPolitics

Much is at stake here. School food matters because schools set an example. Schools that offer poor-quality food because it is cheaper are telling children that what they eat is not important. If a school promotes sales of sodas and snacks, it reinforces the idea that children are supposed to be eating junk foods.

Not me. I'm going on a strict diet sometime in early 2022.

For those of us who haven't started our long weekends yet, a laugh, courtesy of The Onion.

Start Early: Promoting healthy eating in child care settings

A new position paper released by the American Dietetic Association makes the case for establishing benchmarks for nutrition in child care settings, including the following guidelines:

• Foods and beverages served in child care should be nutritionally adequate and consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.



• Child care providers should model and encourage healthful eating for chilren.



• Child care providers should work with children to understand feelings of hunger and satiety and should respect children's hunger and satiety cues, once expressed.



• Child care providers should receive appropriate training in child nutrition, and nutrition education for children and families should be a component of the child care program.
  


• Child care providers should work with families to ensure that foods and beverages brought from home meet nutrition guidelines.

ADA also outlines a role for policy change to promote healthful eating and active play.

You can read a related article here:

Study: Obesity prevention should focus on day care

Experts say the fight against childhood obesity should have a new focus: day care.
Studies show that about 82% of American children under age 6 are in child care outside the home while their parents work.

That means many meals are no longer eaten around the family table, but at day care, where parents may have little control over what toddlers are eating.

Kids in full-time day care can get two-thirds of their daily calories there, “so it’s really other adults who are driving the nutritional value of what children consume,” says study researcher Sara Benjamin Neelon, PhD. She's an assistant professor in the department of community and family medicine at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

In a new study, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Benjamin Neelon and her colleagues reviewed 42 studies of obesity prevention related practices in day care.

They found that most states have minimal requirements for healthy eating and physical activity in child care that may differ from public health expert recommendations. Experts who were not involved in the research praised its scope and said that while it points to substantial problems, it also suggests that day care can be an important place to make lasting changes in a child’s life.

Starting Young

“In general, there’s been an increasing awareness that we have to start tackling obesity very early in a child’s life,” says Alice Ammerman, DrPH, a nutrition professor and director of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“I think things are moving in the right direction, but I think there’s a lot of potential for greater improvement,” particularly through day care, Ammerman says.

Communications tips from Prevention Institute - share your prevention work!

With August Recess winding down, we want to make sure that our legislators continue to hear about the good prevention work our communities are accomplishing. It is up to all of us to speak up and make sure that we are actively shaping the dialogue around community prevention, so that the media and our legislators can understand what we already know: prevention works.

Here is just a sampling of the media coverage our community has accomplished so far during the recess:

• In an op-ed in the Wisconsin State Journal, "Getting kids to eat their vegetables," health educator Maggie Smith captures her community’s resolve to develop local solutions to better the health of their children: “The success that La Crosse County and others implementing Farm to School programs are enjoying could never happen without the commitment, dedication and contributions from the wider community.”
  


• In the Portland Tribune,"We all have a stake in fighting obesity," public health officer Dr. Gary Oxman pens an op-ed effectively responding to a piece that ignored the environment’s role in shaping our health: “…obesity didn’t just 'hit' our community. It took decades of complex and often subtle shifts in what children eat and how much they move.”
  


• In a Miami Herald feature, “Miami-Dade initiatives target childhood obesity,” Penny Parham, Miami-Dade Public Schools’ food and nutrition director, deftly cues the environment first when describing her program’s goals: “We need to give our kids the best foods from which to select and then teach them to want to make the right selections.”



• “New options in store at two tienditas” in the San Antonio-Express News highlights why changing the environment in San Antonio is crucial to changing behaviors and ultimately health outcomes: “People buy what's available. It's easier to walk across the corner to pick up (whole) milk instead of taking two buses in 100-degree weather to buy skim at H-E-B.”

It’s not too late to broadcast your community’s successes, too. Here are the core messages we need to share with legislators and media alike:

• Community prevention is evidence-based.



• Community prevention is local.



• Prevention is good for business.



• Government has a role in public health.



• The American people want prevention.

We’ve compiled all of our media advocacy resources, including talking points, sample op-eds, and messaging and framing strategies in one easy-to-use Media Advocacy Toolkit for your review.

What you can do

• Send a letter to a Member of Congress to educate your legislator about the importance and value of community prevention. Prevention Institute provides easy-to-use, tailored e-mails that you can send directly to your legislator.
  


• Write an op-ed, blog post, or letter to the editor of your local paper.



• Issue a press release highlighting the work taking place in your community.

From Prevention Institute.

Keeping "First Food" part of the conversation.

“First Food” is Real Food Justice on Civil Eats

I’ve got a problem with the food system conversation in the U.S. It neglects to include what I call the “first food”—breast milk—and emphasize the critical importance of breastfeeding. No conversation about equitable food systems can truly exist without including the first food and understanding how the racial and social inequities around breastfeeding adversely affect vulnerable populations.

If access to healthy food is a basic human right then doesn’t that right start at birth? Shouldn’t our smallest and most vulnerable citizens have fair and just access to the healthiest food for them?

Read more...