Posts Tagged: Nutrition

Maser retires after 15 years, educating the community in North County San Diego

About 15 years ago, Mary Maser saw an ad in the classified section of her local newspaper for a job opening with the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program serving San Diego County. As a community education specialist with EFNEP, she has provided nutrition lessons for thousands of Spanish-speaking residents until her retirement on July 1.

Maser, who is of Mexican descent and fluent in Spanish, enjoyed working with the Spanish-speaking community in San Diego because it kept her connected to her roots. Before joining University of California Cooperative Extension, Maser taught factory workers English and served as an interpreter in the medical field. 

“I've had a lot of different jobs and being fluent in Spanish has helped me in my line of work tremendously,” she said.

“We offer the EFNEP courses in English and Spanish, but a majority of my students were Spanish speakers,” recalled Maser, who taught nutrition education and healthy living practices to adults. Making her students feel as comfortable as possible was important to Maser. 

Based on her time with EFNEP, Maser said that she is most proud of her students' dedication.

“I was impressed with the number of students who showed up to every class, wanting to learn, even during the pandemic,” Maser said. When the COVID-19 shelter-in-place mandate hit California, Maser said she started teaching students over the phone.

“I had one student who was spending quality time with family in Tahoe, and I told her that it was okay for us to postpone class,” Maser said. “But she insisted and said she wanted to do it, so we did.” 

Maser was the only community education specialist who worked in San Diego's North County. For years, she participated in community events like the Fallbrook Clinic Health Fair, promoting EFNEP and connecting with residents. In 2019, she was recognized by Senator Brian Jones for her work with EFNEP and continued efforts teaching healthy living.

“Many of my students didn't speak English well or at all and had varying levels of education. For some, it was the first class they ever took in their life,” said Maser. “There's a lot of fear and stress they deal with on a daily basis, but it never stopped them from coming to class,” she added, emphasizing how much she admires her students' tenacity to learn.

Shirley Salado, UCCE nutrition supervisor for EFNEP in San Diego County, described Maser as a positive, respectful and considerate teammate. “Mary loved to teach nutrition and fondly cared for the Hispanic community. She was so attentive to her participants, ensuring nutrition knowledge was clearly presented to help families make better healthy choices for their well-being,” Salado said.

In her retirement, Maser is looking forward to traveling and learning another language. “I think Italian would be the easiest for me to learn, and I know a little bit of Portuguese, but I'm also interested in French,” she said.

Maser will also be using retirement to practice what she has preached for so many years, by focusing on her health and wellness. 

NFCS renamed Community Nutrition and Health

For decades, Cooperative Extension across the country has frequently used the name “Nutrition Family and Consumer Sciences” to refer to locally driven efforts that strengthen our public health in concert with the federally funded nutrition education programs that support individuals to make healthier food choices. In 2020, UC ANR senior leadership identified the need for a name change, in parallel with similar repositioning other states are undertaking, to more accurately reflect our work across California and open new pathways for our future. They brainstormed with the health-related advisor network and landed on the term “Community Nutrition and Health.”

In February 2022, this name was reflected in the title of the newly hired Statewide Director of Community Nutrition and Health, and has since become the title of several newly recruited UC Cooperative Extension advisor positions. 

By changing our name to Community Nutrition and Health, we are bringing more attention to the ways our programs support community health outside of nutrition education, such as increasing physical activity, spreading awareness about flu and COVID-19 vaccines, and working with strategic partners to advance policy, systems and environmental changes that support public health.

This new name is more understandable and resonant with our audiences and also points the way to our work ahead: reaching more Californians and strengthening healthy communities in newer and deeper ways. It coincides with an internal strategic planning process that will help us advance integrated approaches to promote holistic health and equitable communities for all Californians.

The Community Nutrition and Health network of researchers and educators advance local research and extension work focused on improving human health, and often work within theCalFresh Healthy Living, UC program and Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program, with lots of collaboration with the UC Master Food Preserver Program, the UC Master Gardener Program, the 4-H Youth Development Program and the Nutrition Policy Institute.

If you are an active member of the Community Nutrition and Health network, please keep reading for important actions to support this name change.

For all Community Nutrition and Health advisors, specialists, supervisors and educators 

Please update your ANR Profile:

1. Log into the ANR Portal
2. Click on “Profile” in the top, left corner
3. Click on “Unit(s)” in the left side menu
4. In the Search bar, type “Community Nutrition and Health” and select as Primary Unit
5. In the Search bar, type the statewide program you work with and select as Secondary Unit

For all Community Nutrition and Health advisors, specialists, supervisors, and educators – please update your email signature:

1. Open Outlook and click on the File tab.
2. Click Options and then choose Mail.
3. Scroll down to the Signatures section and click the Edit button.
4. Make your changes in the Signature Editor and then click OK.
5. Your changes will be saved automatically.
6. Your new signature should appear like this example with “Community Nutrition and Health” beneath your statewide program name:

Christie Hedrick, MPH
Statewide Coordinator
Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program
Community Nutrition and Health
UC Agriculture and Natural Resources
2801 Second Street, Davis, CA 95618
Office: (530) 390-9753
Email: clhedrick@ucanr.edu
EFNEP |  UCANR

For all Community Nutrition and Health advisors and county-based website administrators – please update your websites. (Site Builder does not have a search and replace function built in, so we'll use Google.)

1. Open a new browser tab.
2. The site owner/admin should log in to their portal, and navigate to Site Builder
3. Open another new browser tab, and go to Google.com and search for “site:ucanr.edu/sites/NFCS_CA/ “Nutrition, Family, and Consumer Sciences (NFCS)”
4. Google will return search results for all instances of “Nutrition, Family, and Consumer Sciences (NFCS)” on the site. 
5. Click on the first link of search results and you'll go to a page you can find in Site Builder to make your changes.
6. Find the Search terms in the proper Text Box Asset, then replace them. You can search the Text Asset by using Ctrl F for Windows or Command F for Mac.
7. Scroll down to the bottom of Edit Page and click the Update Asset Button.
8. Test your changes by scrolling up on the page and clicking View Current Site tab in the green tab row.
9. If everything looks good, go back to Google and click on the next link in your original search results.
10. Repeat Steps 5-9 for the remaining search results pertaining to your webpage.

Don't worry about updating blogs or news articles.

Rest assured these changes will be adopted into the exciting new Integrated Web Platform site to be launched in the coming months.

Please complete all of these changes by Aug. 31, 2023. 

If you have any questions about these actions, please contact Amira Resnick, Statewide Director of Community Nutrition and Health, at arresnick@ucanr.edu.

Woodward-Lopez retires after 23 years of leadership in advancing nutrition

Young people across California and the U.S. enjoy healthier, more nutritious food options at school, thanks to the contributions of Gail Woodward-Lopez, who retired on July 1 as the associate director of research at the Nutrition Policy Institute, a part of University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Woodward-Lopez officially joined UC ANR in 2015, when she and other researchers at the Atkins Center for Weight and Health at UC Berkeley merged with NPI. But her association with UC ANR goes back much further, as her work at CWH was always directed by UC Cooperative Extension academics – including the research that paved the way for California's “junk food ban” in schools.

Two groundbreaking bills, signed in 2005, set nutrition standards in California for “competitive foods”– the items sold in vending machines and from food service a la carte (as opposed to federally subsidized school meals). That legislation – which inspired similar policy changes across the country – was informed by the work of Woodward-Lopez and her colleagues, who had looked at the financial impact of establishing those standards.

“Our study was so pivotal that I literally had people calling me from the floor of the Senate or the Assembly when they were debating that legislation,” recalled Woodward-Lopez.

Changing perceptions of population weight gain

Originally intending to pursue a career in neurobiology, Woodward-Lopez found that lab work didn't suit her temperament. Seeking to work more directly on social issues, she embarked on a public health path, with an emphasis on nutritional aspects that incorporated her interest in biological sciences.

Woodward-Lopez's early work focused on a challenge that was just beginning to catch the attention of researchers: the rapid rise in the Body Mass Index (BMI) among the U.S. population. In tracing the causes of this epidemic, she and her colleagues shifted academic and public attention toward the host of environmental factors that contribute to weight gain – instead of focusing exclusively on an individual's choice to eat healthy and be physically active.

Woodward-Lopez, who helped set the identity and agenda of the Center for Weight and Health when it was founded in 2000, moved policy and practice beyond educational approaches and public awareness campaigns. As she noted: “No one thinks sugar-sweetened beverages are good for you.”

“Education alone is not going to work if people do not have access to the healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity, if they're not safe in their neighborhoods, or if they can't afford the healthy options,” she explained.

Given her seminal role in the field, Kaiser Permanente sought out Woodward-Lopez as a “thought partner” on the organization's community-based obesity prevention programs and school health work.

“Gail brought deep rigor and expertise, of course, but also a super-practical, community-focused perspective to our work,” said Loel Solomon, professor of health systems science at the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine. “Her integrity and values around health equity were evident in everything we did together, and our communities are so much the better for it.”

Elevating and enhancing CalFresh Healthy Living

At the Nutrition Policy Institute, the focus of Woodward-Lopez's work has been refining the evaluation and delivery of SNAP-Ed, the educational component of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (commonly referred to as “food stamps”). Known in California as CalFresh Healthy Living, SNAP-Ed represents the largest single source of ongoing funding for nutrition and physical activity promotion in the state.

“The program can really impact millions of people,” Woodward-Lopez said. “For county health departments, this is one of their main sources of funding and provides the backbone for everything else they do in nutrition and physical activity.”

But given the unevenness and variety of interventions implemented by local health departments, determining the efficacy of those efforts is a daunting task. Woodward-Lopez and her NPI colleagues have been instrumental in devising creative approaches that help pinpoint the most effective public health measures.

For example, researchers found that combining school policy changes with increased opportunities for physical activity was the best strategy to encourage student fitness. They discovered that health departments diverting resources away from nutrition programs during the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected communities of color. And they also continue to emphasize that interventions need to be tailored to the specific cultural and political conditions within a community. 

“I think in all of the work we do, we try to come up with those practical applications – what does this mean for communities? How can we do this differently? How are our findings actionable?” Woodward-Lopez said.

Her contributions toward the evaluation of California Department of Public Health SNAP-Ed have impressed and inspired Lauren MacKenzie Whetstone, chief of CDPH's Research, Evaluation and Strategic Alignment Section, Nutrition Education and Obesity Prevention Branch.

“Gail and her team have elevated the quality of our evaluation work and the evaluation support that we provide to local health department grantees,” said MacKenzie Whetstone, who has known Woodward-Lopez for nearly a decade. “Gail contributed substantially to statewide SNAP-Ed evaluation as well, again working collaboratively to ensure high quality evaluation. Our work is all the stronger due to Gail's dedication to excellent SNAP-Ed evaluation.”

To the benefit of the field and community health, Woodward-Lopez plans to remain engaged in her life's work. While she looks forward to spending more time with loved ones, traveling and pursuing her interests in art and music, she will remain a guiding voice for advancing public health.

“I'd really like to get more involved in policy through advocacy and through doing things like writing letters to the editor or social media commentary,” she said. “I already have some ideas for some editorials I want to write.”

“Advancing Health Equity” webinars hosted by UC ANR and UCSF

Have you wondered how UC ANR can make a difference in advancing health equity? 

UC ANR's Community Nutrition and Health unit is proud to host a three-part training series on “Advancing Health Equity” in collaboration with UC San Francisco School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, and Center for Child and Community Health. UC ANR educators, supervisors, advisors and specialists from across our statewide programs and initiatives are invited to attend. 

This will be an interactive learning opportunity to come together and visualize how UC ANR can address critical health disparities Californians face and put into practice the opportunities outlined in our Strategic Initiatives Health Equity Concept Note (found here on the UC ANR website).

Please save the dates and plan to join this 3-part series:

Session 1: 2-3:30 p.m., Wed. Apr. 5

Build your familiarity and understanding of core concepts related to health equity to establish a shared language about health equity at UC ANR.

Zoom Meeting

https://ucanr.zoom.us/j/92318469375

Meeting ID: 923 1846 9375

One tap mobile

+16699006833,,92318469375# US (San Jose)

+16694449171,,92318469375# US

Session 2: 2-3:30 p.m., Wed. May 3

Identify how existing UC ANR work fits into the concepts and goals related to health equity including addressing the social determinants of health and policy, systems and environmental change work.

Zoom Meeting

https://ucanr.zoom.us/j/96840522425

Meeting ID: 968 4052 2425

One tap mobile

+16699006833,,96840522425# US (San Jose)

+16694449171,,96840522425# US

Session 3: 2-3:30 p.m., Wed. June 7

Inform new areas and approaches UC ANR can work in to advance health equity in the future including transitioning from expert to partner within the communities that we serve.

Zoom Meeting

https://ucanr.zoom.us/j/98465748502

Meeting ID: 984 6574 8502

One tap mobile

+16694449171,,98465748502# US

+16699006833,,98465748502# US (San Jose)

 

 

NPI work underpins historic White House conference on hunger, nutrition, health

At the first White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health convened since 1969, President Biden announced on Sept. 28 a national strategy “to end hunger in America and increase healthy eating and physical activity by 2030 so fewer Americans experience diet-related diseases.” Much of the foundational research undergirding the strategy has been informed in part by the Nutrition Policy Institute, a program of UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.

“Science is the work of many – and no one study answers all the questions – but we have a tremendous body of work that has contributed to this conference, building from all the programs and changes that were made from the last conference,” said NPI director Lorrene Ritchie.

The original Nixon-era conference produced about 1,800 recommendations – and 1,600 were eventually implemented in the subsequent years, according to Stacy Dean, U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services.

A litany of far-reaching programs grew from or were propelled by the 1969 conference: the School Breakfast Program, WIC (the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children), SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)-Ed and CalFresh Healthy Living UC, the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program and more.

This history illustrates the potential for sweeping change from this 2022 conference – which gathered about 500 experts and advocates (with 1,000 more participating online) – and from the national strategy that represents the Biden-Harris administration's “playbook.”

“Does that document have everything in it that we would like? No – but, oh my goodness, if we could accomplish all the things that they've laid out, what a transformational impact it would have,” said Ritchie, adding that she was thrilled that the highest levels of government are prioritizing hunger and nutrition-related chronic disease.

Including beverages in the conversation

In the course of gathering ideas and input from across the country, conference organizers asked Christina Hecht, NPI senior policy advisor, to author and submit NPI recommendations on encouraging the public to choose water instead of sugary drinks. Those suggestions – which range from including water in the “MyPlate” dietary guideline graphic to ensuring that every public school has a water bottle-filling station – crystallized extensive, rigorous scholarship by a broad community.

“NPI's recommendations were built on lots of work by many water researchers and advocates over the years; they're based on many years of thinking by many people,” Hecht said.

Christina and Ken Hecht, NPI policy director, also submitted recommendations as part of the Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Reduction Workgroup, which brings together experts from national, state and local organizations. Several of their key proposals, such as targeting the marketing of sugary drinks and clarifying front-of-package nutrition labels, appear as recommended steps in the national strategy document.

Other nutrition policy changes compiled by Christina Hecht – like updating the Federal Food Service Guidelines used on federal properties and in federal programs – are also reflected in the national strategy, albeit without specifically mentioning sugary drinks. Nonetheless, Hecht believes doors have been opened for future discussions that could incorporate and promote healthy beverages.

“What those doors require are continuing to develop the evidence base, continuing to translate and share the evidence base, and continuing the advocacy to bring that evidence base to the attention of decision makers,” she said.

University of California setting an example

Suzanna Martinez, an NPI-affiliated researcher who attended the White House conference, said she hopes the convening generates momentum for two bills before Congress that would help alleviate food insecurity in higher education: one that provides funding for campuses to address students' basic needs, and another that reduces barriers to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps). The national strategy document explicitly acknowledges that “SNAP's college student eligibility restrictions are out of date given the current population who seek higher education credentials.”

Martinez, an associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at University of California San Francisco, was invited to the conference because she's part of a group driving the UC's effort to halve the number of students facing food insecurity across the system by 2030. That commitment, and UC Berkeley's work on basic needs, were highlighted by Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff during the closing plenary session.

“The work that we're doing here in California tends to set the stage for what happens in other states,” said Martinez, who also cited California's pioneering effort to provide meals for all public school students.

NPI's ongoing work evaluating universal school meals in California and other states is just one example of how its academics and staff are refining innovative programs so they can be adopted more effectively and broadly (perhaps nationally). In fact, the White House identified “healthy school meals for all” as the top strategy for improving food access and affordability, and Ritchie applauds the administration's consistent emphasis on early interventions for healthier outcomes.

“The earlier you can create healthy habits – meaning in utero all the way through childhood – the more likely you are going to have adults who don't end up with nutrition-related chronic diseases,” she explained. “The last thing you want to do is to wait until people are really sick before they start to change their habits.”

Another overarching theme that excites Ritchie is the national strategy's “whole of government” approach to addressing a host of nutrition and hunger issues. One example is how the strategy calls for agencies not traditionally associated with food to contribute to reducing waste, such as the Department of the Treasury clarifying tax benefits for businesses that donate food.

“Throughout the document, over and over again, there are countless examples of creating synergies across government agencies and with local and state governments that can help move the needle,” Ritchie said. “It's just this kind of bold call to action that we really need.”

Read more