A recent study examined changes in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education programming by California's local health departments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Local health department SNAP-Ed programs comprise California's largest obesity prevention program. In March 2020, when schools and other institutions closed their doors in response to the COVID-19 emergency, the impact on public health programs like SNAP-Ed was immediate and large. As the pandemic continued, California's local health departments reported numerous challenges, including the diversion of staff, funding, and other resources from programs like SNAP-Ed to emergency response. Nutrition Policy Institute researchers measured the changes in local health department SNAP-Ed programming and documented dramatic reductions in reach and dose during the early stages of the pandemic. Reductions disproportionately impacted disadvantaged communities, including those with higher poverty, higher proportions of Black and Latino residents, and less healthy neighborhood conditions. Disproportionately reduced access to important health programs may have worsened health disparities in diet and physical activity-related chronic diseases, as well as increasing susceptibility to COVID-19. This study demonstrates the importance of an equity-centered approach to promoting healthy eating and active living, even—or perhaps especially—during public health emergencies. Study results were published in the journal SSM-Population Health by Gail Woodward-Lopez, Erin Esaryk, Sridharshi Hewawitharana, Janice Kao, Evan Talmage, and Carolyn Rider of NPI with funding from the USDA's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education.
- Author: Katherine Lanca
- Editor: Danielle L. Lee
- Editor: Lorrene Ritchie
The American Public Health Association holds an Annual Meeting & Expo for public health professionals to engage, collaborate, and network with the overarching goal of advancing the nation's health. This year's meeting in Boston, November 6-9, 2022 will celebrate 150 Years of Creating the Healthiest Nation: Leading the Path Toward Equity. Nutrition Policy Institute researchers will share findings that bring nutrition equity to the forefront of federal programs, school nutrition, community health, health literacy, and the food retail environment. A list of the poster presentations and live oral presentations is found below.
Retail food environment:
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What can we learn from California's investment in the Healthy Stores Refrigeration Grant Program?
Authors: Carolyn Chelius, Caroline Long, Taylor Baisey, Wendi Gosliner
Wednesday, November 9, 8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.; oral presentation
School meals:
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Providing School Meals to All Students Free of Cost: Challenges and Benefits Reported by School District Foodservice Professionals to Inform California's Policy Implementation
Authors: Wendi Gosliner, Monica Zuercher, Juliana Cohen, Christina Hecht, Michele Polacsek, Kenneth Hecht, Lindsey Turner, Marlene Schwartz, Anisha Patel, Lorrene Ritchie
Monday, November 7, 4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.; oral presentation
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Impact of a teacher intervention to encourage students to eat school lunch
Authors: Hannah Thompson, Stephanie Machado, Kristine Madsen, Renata Cauchon-Robles, Marisa Neelon, Lorrene Ritchie
Monday, November 7, 4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.; oral presentation
SNAP-Ed:
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Evaluation identifies the most promising combinations of school-based Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed) interventions for improving student fitness
Authors: Sridharshi Hewawitharana, Gail Woodward-Lopez, Punam Ohri-Vachaspati, Francesco Acciai, Hannah R. Thompson, Wendi Gosliner
Monday, November 7, 4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.; oral presentation -
Reductions in public health obesity prevention interventions due to COVID-19 disproportionately affect neighborhoods with pre-existing health inequities
Authors: Erin E Esaryk, Carolyn D Rider, Gail Woodward-Lopez
Tuesday, November 8, Session 8; 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.; poster presentation -
A novel approach to measuring potential for health equity impact in community health interventions
Authors: Janice Kao, Gail Woodward-Lopez, Christina Becker, Carolyn Rider, Erin Esaryk, Evan Talmage
Tuesday, November 8, Session 7; 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.; poster presentation
WIC:
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Assessing changes associated with expanding the WIC Cash-Value Benefit for the purchase of fruits and vegetables among children age 1 to 5 years: a longitudinal study
Authors: Marisa Tsai, Christopher Anderson, Catherine Martinez, Martha Meza, Lauren Au, Lorrene Ritchie, Shannon Whaley
Tuesday, November 8, 2:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.; oral presentation
Other:
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Impact of an arts-based public health literacy program delivered online to high school students during the COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Hannah Thompson, Jackie Mendelson, Maya Zamek, Gabriel Cortez, Dean Schillinger
Wednesday, November 9, 12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.; oral presentation
Nutrition Policy Institute researchers Christina Hecht and Janice Kao will take part in the 2022 Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior conference on the intersection of nutrition education and behavior and the digital world. Hecht is a co-author of the abstract “Associations of Perceptions of Water Safety and Tap Water Taste with Beverage Intake Among U.S. Adults,” which Sohyun Park, the lead investigator, will present as a poster. Kao will present a poster from the NPI CalFresh Healthy Living evaluation unit research team—Carolyn Rider, Christina Becker, Evan Talmage, Kaela Plank, Amanda Linares, and Kao—in person from 12:15 to 2:00 EDT on July 31. The poster is titled, “Where Do We Go from Here? California Local Health Departments Navigate School-based SNAP-Ed During COVID-19.” The conference will be held in person, in Atlanta, Georgia, and virtually, from July 29 to July 31, 2022.
Schools are an ideal setting to improve child nutrition and food security and are critical environments in which to implement policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) public health interventions. Federal mandates for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education, known as CalFresh Healthy Living in California, require PSE interventions for obesity prevention efforts combined with direct and indirect education interventions. Researchers at the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Nutrition Policy Institute developed a new method to evaluate the ‘dose' score of complex and multicomponent SNAP-Ed interventions in schools, which can then be linked to student health outcomes. The method also proposes how to calculate dose scores for different intervention categories, including direct education, PSE, garden-based interventions, and physical education. This novel evaluation method can be used in future SNAP-Ed evaluations to inform practitioners and policymakers about the most promising school-based public health interventions to support children's health. The proposed method was published in the American Journal of Evaluation. Study authors include researchers from the NPI CalFresh Healthy Living evaluation team, Sridharshi Hewawitharana, Janice Kao, Carolyn Rider, Evan Talmage, Karen Webb, Wendi Gosliner, and Gail Woodward-Lopez, and Sadie Costello from UC Berkeley.
The USDA's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed) is an evidence-based program that helps low-income individuals live healthier lives through education, social marketing, and policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) changes. Known as CalFresh Healthy Living (CFHL) in California, SNAP-Ed is overseen by the California Department of Social Services and implemented by four state implementing agencies and the local implementing agencies (LIAs) that they fund. The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) is one of four state implementing agencies and funds 60 local health departments. Beginning in 2018, California's LIAs use the Program Evaluation and Reporting System (PEARS) to report their CFHL activities and interventions. The Nutrition Policy Institute serves as CDPH's evaluation contractor for its CFHL program; NPI's PEARS team, Carolyn Rider, Janice Kao, Evan Talmage, and Christina Becker, provide technical and evaluation assistance to CDPH and its LIAs for PEARS reporting. They authored a new report which presents the background, definitions, and methods used by CDPH and its funded local health departments for reporting CFHL interventions implemented throughout California during Federal Fiscal Year 2020. The report, titled “Background on Local Health Department Reporting of CalFresh Healthy Living Programs in the Program Evaluation and Reporting System, FFY 2020”, also details challenges in reporting CFHL activities and gives recommendations to improve reporting.
