Families with low-income that participate in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program–known as CalFresh in California–receive monthly benefits to spend on food. The California Nutrition Incentive Program (CNIP), operated by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, is a strategy to increase CalFresh participants' intake of fruits and vegetables by making them more affordable with financial incentives for purchasing them at venues such as farmers markets. The COVID-19 pandemic led to major disruptions to the food system, resulting in many challenges for farmers and low-income shoppers. Additional federal funds were provided during the pandemic to increase CNIP incentives to better support farmers and CalFresh shoppers. Wendi Gosliner from the University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Nutrition Policy Institute received funding from the California Department of Food and Agriculture to evaluate CalFresh farmers market shoppers' experiences of the additional funds for CNIP-type incentives during the pandemic, expanding on her previous CNIP evaluation work. Gosliner will work in partnership NPI researchers Sridharshi Hewawitharana, Celeste Felix and Ron Strochlic, CDFA and the Gretchen Swanson Evaluation Center on the one-year project, which began in January 2022.

Schools are an ideal setting for policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) approaches to childhood obesity prevention. An initial assessment of a school's health environment, policies, and practices is critical for planning and identifying priority PSE interventions, while reassessment can be used to identify measurable change for ongoing planning and evaluation purposes. School-based obesity prevention programs need an assessment that measures wellness policy implementation and compliance at the school level, as required by the Local School Wellness Policy Implementation Final Rule of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The assessment must comprehensively assesses school nutrition and physical activity practices, and have the measurement properties necessary to detect change over time and differences between schools. Nutrition Policy Institute researchers shared the development and psychometric testing of a site-level questionnaire for elementary schools that fills this gap in an article published December 20, 2021 in the journal Childhood Obesity. Elementary schools and their partners can use the new instrument to plan PSE interventions, measure obesity-prevention best practices and wellness policy implementation, and evaluate their progress towards achieving best practices in nutrition and physical activity. Study authors include researchers from the NPI CalFresh Healthy Living evaluation team, Carolyn Rider, Janice Kao, Sridharshi Hewawitharana, Christina Becker, Amanda Linares, and Gail Woodward-Lopez.  

New research from the University of California Nutrition Policy Institute suggests that a Harvest of the Month curriculum promoting fruit and vegetable intake, healthy beverage choices, physical activity, and the importance of local agriculture in school-aged children can improve school children's fruit and vegetable intake. Each lesson includes grade-appropriate math and English Language Arts activities addressing the California Common Core Standards. Researchers at NPI collaborated with the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and Alameda County Office of Education (ACOE) to evaluate an HOTM curriculum taught once per week for six weeks to over 140 fourth- through sixth-grade students in three schools. Students in the three schools receiving the HOTM curriculum showed greater increases in total fruit and vegetable intake, fruit intake, and 100% juice consumption, and preference for several types of fruits and vegetables compared to 210 students in one school that did not receive the curriculum. Focus group findings suggest students, parents and teachers were highly satisfied with the HOTM curriculum. These findings meet the USDA criteria for programs funded by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education, and schools are encouraged to coordinate with local and state agencies administering SNAP-Ed to integrate HOTM curriculum to expand their nutrition education and promotion efforts. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, adaptations for online curriculum delivery and the adoption of appropriate safety measures for taste-testing when in-person delivery occurs may be needed. The study, funded by the California Department of Public Health, was published in the Journal of School Health in August 2021. Authors include Ron Strochlic, Gail Woodward-Lopez, and Sridharshi Hewawitharana from NPI, Katharina Streng, Jackie Richardson, and Lauren Whetstone from CDPH, and Derek Gorshow from ACOE.

New research from the University of California Nutrition Policy Institute suggests that a 4-week Rethink your Drink curriculum for high school students can improve high school students' use of Nutrition Facts labels and decrease their consumption of diet soda. The Rethink Your Drink curriculum, developed by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), promotes drinking water and a variety of healthy beverages instead of sugar-sweetened beverages and use of the Nutrition Facts label and Ingredient List to choose beverages with little or no added sugars. The curriculum was pilot-tested in three California high schools with over 220 students and compared to 92 students in two schools that did not receive the curriculum. Despite the positive impact on Nutrition Facts label usage and decreasing consumption of diet soda, there was only a small but not significant decrease in sugar-sweetened beverage intake by students receiving the curriculum compared to those that did not. These findings suggest that developing a curriculum that is effective for improving beverage consumption among high school students may be challenging. Interviews and surveys with teachers and focus groups with students suggest the curriculum could be shortened, made more engaging with interactive activities as well as taste-tests of healthy beverages, and that the curriculum be modified to target younger students to support earlier development of healthy beverage consumption habits. Researchers suggest the effectiveness of the Rethink Your Drink curriculum could be increased if paired with evidence-based policy, systems and environmental change strategies that eliminate sugar-sweetened beverages from high-school students' environments. The study, funded by the CDPH, was published in the Health Education Journal in September 2021. Authors include Ron Strochlic, Gail Woodward-Lopez, Kaela Plank and Sridharshi Hewawitharana from NPI, and Jackie Richardson and Lauren Whetstone from CDPH.