In collaboration with the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine Center for Community Health and ideas42, the Nutrition Policy Institute's Wendi Gosliner and Ron Strochlic developed new flyers to help address concerns about produce safety during the coronavirus pandemic. The flyers also include information on what help is available to help people in need buy fresh produce, highlighting CalFresh, school meals, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), food distribution sites, senior meals, and the nutrition incentive program which allows low-income shoppers to match their food dollars on fruits and vegetables at participating farmer's markets. The flyers are available in both English and Spanish.
/span>/span>Nutrition Policy Institute Senior Researcher and Policy Advisor Wendi Gosliner along with her colleagues Professor Lia Fernald at the University of California (UC), Berkeley School of Public Health and Dr. Rtia Hamad of UC San Francisco received a $10,000 grant from the Berkeley Population Center to conduct a study entitled, “Effects of COVID-19 Mitigation Strategies on Economically Disadvantaged Children and Families in California." They will be interviewing 30 families with young children in Alameda, Merced, and Los Angeles counties to capture the impacts of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mitigation strategies -- shelter-in-place orders and school closures -- as well as safety net responses -- increased CalFresh benefits for some and changes in school meals -- on families' well being and food security. The study aims to capture knowledge, perceptions, and utilization of various supports during the crisis and ways in which current and future policy response measures could better meet families' needs.
Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) and UC Berkeley School of Public Health researchers published a new study in partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) on the impact of a multi-component intervention to increase students' lunch participation in SFUSD public middle and high schools. The study, titled "The Impact of a Multipronged Intervention to Increase School Lunch Participation among Secondary School Students in an Urban Public School District" was published in Childhood Obesity by UC Berkeley researchers Hannah Thompson and Kristine Madsen; NPI's Wendi Gosliner and Lorrene Ritchie; UC Berkeley doctoral alumna Annie Reed; and SFUSD's Orla O'Keefe and Kate Wobbekind. Data are from a 3-year quasi-randomized study among 24 secondary schools, half of which received an intervention including cafeteria redesign, additional school lunch points-of-sale (mobile carts and vending machines), and teacher education. This research was funded by USDA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program.
Nutrition Policy Institute's latest study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior March 2020 issue suggests that schools across the U.S. adhered equally to the federal 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act school meal nutrition standards despite poverty level. The study was conducted using data collected in 2013-2015 from over 401 U.S. elementary and middle schools as part of the Healthy Communities Study. The study was lead by Lauren Au, NPI associate researcher, in collaboration with NPI researchers Lorrene Ritchie, Klara Gurzo, Marisa Tsai, Janice Kao, Wendi Gosliner and Patricia Guenther from the University of Utah Department of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology. Results from the study are available for free download until April 24, 2020.
Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) Senior Researcher and Policy Advisor Wendi Gosliner, in collaboration with Professor Lia Fernald at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, received a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Equity-Focused Policy Research grant to understand the reasons for disparities in access to income support, particularly among urban Latinx and African American populations and among rural whites in California. Dr. Gosliner will work with Dr. Fernald specifically to evaluate levels of awareness, barriers to uptake, and the benefits of participation in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) among families with children ages 0-5 years old in three California counties - Los Angeles, Alameda, and Merced. The two-year project will be completed in November 2021.