NIH Recently or Actively Supported School Nutrition Funded Research
Project Title List:
A Rewards Program Contributing to Healthier Eating in Restaurants and Schools (Hill; Accents on Health, Inc.)
Assessing the Impact of the New NSLP Nutrition Standards on Child BMI (Vericker; Urban Institute)
Brazos Partnership for Childhood Obesity Research (Benden; Texas A&M University)
Childhood Obesity Prevention and Treatment Research Consortium
Combating Produce Consumption Disparity: Appalachian Farm to School Intervention (Swanson; University of Kentucky)
Communities and Schools Together for Childhood Obesity Prevention (Johnson-Shelton; Oregon Research Institute)
Do State-Level School Nutrition Requirements Promote Healthy Eating and Weight? (Argeseanu Cunningham; Emory)
Impacts of School Policies on Student Diet and Activity Behaviors and Obesity (Nanney; University of Minnesota)
Impact on the Food Environment on Child Body Mass Index (Elbel; New York University)
Improving Diet Via A School Cafeteria Intervention Optimizing NSLP Policy Impact (Mazzeo; Virginia Commonwealth)
Improving High School Breakfast Environments (Nanney; University of Minnesota)
Increasing Water Intake In Lieu of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Among Latino Youth (Patel; University of California-SF)
Multilevel Influences on Childhood Obesity Disparities (Sanchez-Vaznaugh; San Francisco State University)
Revised Federal School Meal Guidelines: Impact on Student Food (Cullen; Baylor College of Medicine)
School Based Obesity Project (Arkere; Texas A&M University)
School Food Environment and Child Well-Being (Datar, RAND Corporation)
School Wellness Policy: RCT to Implement and Evaluate Impact on Childhood Obesity (Ickovics; Yale University)
State Policy Classification System & Policies that Influence the School Physical Education & Nutrition Environment (NCI)
The Impact of School Food Policy on Childhood Obesity (Schwartz; New York University)
Virtual Sprouts: Web-based Gardening Games to Teach Nutrition and Combat Obesity (Spruijt-Metz; Southern California)
Wellness Program Implementation: School and Student Toolkits (Wyle-Rosett; Albert Einstein College of Medicine)
Project Title: A Rewards Program Contributing to Healthier Eating in Restaurants and SchoolsID: 9R44CA192374-02A1
Principal Investigator: Hill, Esther (Accents on Health, Inc.)
Funding Mechanism: PA-13-234; NCI (FY2014) (Budget End Date July 31, 2015)
Study Aims: The goals of the Phase II REWARDS PROGRAM include: 1) expanding the REWARDS PROGRAM to Schools and restaurants throughout California; 2) measuring increased awareness and participation by families in the program, restaurant sales generated by the school promotions, and funds made available from the restaurants to the Schools for the Wellness Initiatives; and 3) developing strategies to expand the PROGRAM nationwide during Phase III. school district leaders, local PTA and others will help promote the REWARDS PROGRAM to both children and parents through the schools' communication channels.
Publication: No publication information available at this time.
Project Title: Assessing the Impact of the New NSLP Nutrition Standards on Child BMI
ID: 1R03HD081410-01
Principal Investigator: Vericker, Tracy (Urban Institute, transferred to Westat)
Funding Mechanism: PA-13-099; NICHD (FY2015, 2014) (Budget End Date July 31, 2015)
Study Aims: 1) To examine whether the new school nutrition standards have affected elementary school children's body mass index (BMI) and risk of obesity; and 2) To examine, in two specific contexts, whether or not school nutrition standards being implemented as intended and to document the obstacles schools faced in implementing the new school nutrition standards. No publications information available at this time.
Publications: No publication information available at this time.
Project Title: Brazos Partnership for Childhood Obesity Research
ID: 5R21HD068841-02
Principal Investigator: Benden, Mark Edward (Texas A&M University Health and Science Center)
Funding Mechanism: PA-10-069; NICHD (FY2013 and FY2012) (Budget End Date December 31, 2014)
Study Aims: The dynamic classroom study seeks to achieve four specific aims: AIM 1: To strengthen support of community stakeholders forpolicy-relevant childhoodobesityresearchin Brazos County. AIM 2: To measure the degree to which stand-biased workstations increase calorie expenditure and reduce body fat percentage (impedance method) and body mass index in first and second grade students over the course of two academic years. AIM 3: To investigate whether stand/sit workstations improve students' classroom performance, specifically behavioral engagement and academic achievement. AIM 4: To identify factors that promote or inhibit the implementation and use of the stand/sit desks in classroom settings. The study seeks to examine health and academic outcomes in order to present comprehensive information to schools that has the potential to impactpolicyat the school, district, state, and national levels. Relevant to NICHD's mission, this intervention has the potential to reach the vast majority of children through the public school system, enhancing their ability to stay healthy and be successful in their education and increasing their chances of a full and productive life.
Publications:
Benden, ME, et al. The evaluation of the impact of a stand-biased desk on energy expenditure and physical activity for elementary school students. Int J Environmental Res Public Health. 2014;11(9):361-375.
The use of a standing desk showed a significant higher mean energy expenditure by 0.16 kcal/min (p< 0.0001) in the fall semester, and a higher EE by 0.08 kcal/min (p= 0.0092) in the spring semester.
Project Title: Childhood Obesity Prevention and Treatment Research (COPTR)
Study Aims: This research program is a collaborative effort between NHLBI and NICHD. It supports multiple outstanding controlled trials that are testing the efficacy of innovative interventions that address issues immediately germane to the childhood obesity epidemic. There are two obesity prevention and two treatment trials. Applicant institutions are designing and conducting randomized controlled trials to test innovative prevention or treatment interventions that are preceded by pilot studies. The two obesity prevention trials will develop and test approaches that target home, community, and primary care settings for preschool children living in low income and ethnically diverse neighborhoods. The two obesity treatment trials will examine obesity therapies for overweight and obese children 7 to 16 years old in school and home settings in collaboration with local youth organizations. The ultimate goal is prevention of future obesity-related morbidity and mortality.
Project Title: Combating Produce Consumption Disparity: Appalachian Farm to School Intervention
ID: 521HD068844-02
Principal Investigator: Swanson, Mark (University of Kentucky)
Funding Mechanism: PA-07-391; NICHD (FY2012) (Budget End Date April 30, 2015)
Study Aims: (1) To tailor existing farm to school programs, using formative research, including the development of promotional media, for use in a low-income, high disparity Appalachian community; and (2) To implement and evaluate a pilot F2S program as a means of improving F and V consumption in a low-income Appalachian elementary school.
Publication: No publication information available at this time.
Project Title: Communities and Schools Together for Childhood Obesity Prevention
ID: 5R01HD057839-05
Principal Investigator: Johnson-Shelton, Deborah (Oregon Research Institute)
Funding Mechanism: PAR-07-283; NICHD (FY2012 and FY2011)
Study Aims: The Communities and Schools Together (CAST) study seeks to build a collaborative school-community partnership to discoverresearched solutions to local obesityhealth risks for children. Partners in this proposed study include an elementary school district with an enrollment of 3,000 students in a suburban/rural community in Oregon. Community partners include a multidisciplinary group of organizational members focused on food system environments, parent training and health education; university academic programs experienced in assessing nutritional policies and practice, community built environments, and physical activity access and supports; and aresearchorganization capable of assisting in measuring and evaluating community-based interventions to support of communities and schools in their efforts to reduce childhoodobesity. To assist this CAST CBPR, we propose the development of a community health monitoring system to serve as community-based repository forresearchon local health needs. This CHMS will help track rates of childobesity, analyzing environmental and social influences ofobesity, and developing strategies for effective and timely community-basedobesityprevention and intervention programs. CAST partners will conductresearchon local social, built environment, and food environment influences and factors related to child health, develop and evaluate a community developed, data driven parent health intervention program, and document program processes and collaboratively developedresearchmethods and findings for ongoing dissemination and replication of the CAST program. The project will develop a community-school partnership toresearchenvironmental factors influencing obesityrisk among elementary school children. This project will create a Community-Based Health Monitoring system to serve as a researchrepository forobesityprevention collaboration and aresearchtool for use in other communities. The project will also develop and evaluate a collaborative andresearch-based parenting curriculum to reduce community risks ofobesityamong children. School neighborhoods will be assessed for children}s health via established built- and food-systemresearchmethods, which will measure the relative strengths and challenges of neighborhoods for support of positive child health outcomes.
Publications:
Morene, G, et al. Prevalence and prediction of overweight and obesity among elementary school students. J Sch Health. 2013;83(3):157-163.
The data are consistent with the prevalence of overweight/obesity among American children and Hispanic children in particular. District prevalence of overweight/obesity is higher than available state statistics. Most of the BMI variation is accounted for by ethnicity, SES, and grade. The grade effect and high prevalence of overweight/obesity provide a rationale for BMI screening retention at the schools.
Evers, C, et al. Parent safety perceptions of child walking routes. J Transport Health. 2014;1(2):108-115.
Walking rates to school remain low for U.S. children in large part due to parent concern for child safety. Little research has investigated the specific features of streets and intersection networks that parents associate with safe walking networks for children. To investigate which aspects of the child walking environment lead to parental concern, parent volunteers conducted an audit of streets leading to seven elementary schools in a suburban school district. Parents were most likely to feel concern about streets that lacked sidewalks or had sidewalks with obstructions. Wheelchair-accessible routes were seen as appropriate for walking children. Parents expressed concern over safety at intersections, particularly those involving large streets; traffic controls did not mollify their concern.
Johnson-Shelton, D, et al. A community-based participatory research approach for preventing childhood obesity: The Communities and Schools Together Project. Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education and Action, 2015;9(3):351-361.
Investigator-initiated CBPR partnerships can effectively organize and facilitate large health-promoting partnerships involving multiple, diverse stakeholder communities. Lessons learned from CAST illustrate the synergy that can propel projects that are holistically linked to the agents of a community.
Project Title: Do State-Level School Nutrition Requirements Promote Healthy Eating and Weight?
ID: 5R02HD061509-02
Principal Investigator: Argeseanu Cunningham, Solveig (Emory University)
Funding Mechanism: PA-09-163; NICHD (FY 2011, 2010) (Budget End Date March 31, 2013)
Study Aims: We will evaluate the potential of state policies that address school breakfast and sweetened beverage availability to improve healthy eating and body weight in elementary and middle school children. We test three hypotheses: 1) State level school breakfast requirements increase availability and consumption of school breakfast and increase intake of nutritious foods; 2) State restrictions on sales of sweetened beverages at school lead to lower availability of such beverages at schools, lower total intake of these items, and lower prevalence of obesity among children; 3) State-level school policies requiring breakfast and restricting sweetened beverage sales have greater impact on low income and minority children. DESIGN: Our analytic strategy replicates an experimental study design by following children who were and were not exposed to policy changes, depending on their state of residence. Comparing children's weight and consumption in states that implemented a policy during the study with those that did not allows us to assess the effect of the policies. We will use the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K), which follows a nationally representative cohort of children from kindergarten into 8th grade. ECLS-K includes substantial numbers of minority and impoverished children. We examine 2 sets of outcomes: children's weight (BMI z-score and obesity) and nutrition (breakfast and sweetened beverage consumption). A significant advantage of the ECLSK is that height and weight are measured by trained assessors. We estimate ordinary least squares regressions, logistic regressions, and fixed effects models, using survey weights to ensure representativeness. Our key explanatory variables are state-level policies, which will be compiled into a comprehensive dataset and merged with the ECLS-K data. We include controls for child, home, neighborhood, and school characteristics. We estimate models by race/ethnicity and poverty status. SIGNIFICANCE: State laws requiring better school nutrition potentially offer a simple, inexpensive strategy for improving nutrition and weight among school-children. Yet the effectiveness of these policies has not been explored. This research contributes to knowledge about weight changes during childhood, progression to obesity, and behavioral and environmental factors that affect these, assessing: 1) The responsiveness of schools to state policy changes; 2) The influence of state policies on child weight and nutrition; and 3) Whether students displace their consumption of unhealthy goods to out-of school settings. We will provide empirical evidence on these issues from the largest national longitudinal study measuring weight and height in children. Public Health Relevance: Previous research shows that breakfast and soda consumption are both independently associated with children's weight outcomes, suggesting that interventions focused on these may have long-term benefits for child health. This study will evaluate state policies with high potential to improve healthy eating and body weight among children, measuring the effects of state policies that require schools to offer breakfast and that restrict sales of sweetened beverages at school. This policyevaluation will assist policymakers in making informed decisions about whether more widespread legislation in these areas would promote children's health.
School Nutrition Relevant Publications:
Cunningham, SA & Zavodny, M. Does the sale of sweetened beverages at school affect children’s weight.Soc Sci & Med. 2011;73(9):1332-1339.
In response to the increase in children's weight in recent decades, many states, school districts, and schools in the United States have limited or eliminated the sale of sweetened beverages at school. These policies are promoted for their potential to reduce childhood overweight and obesity, but their effectiveness has not been evaluated. Using a large nationally representative longitudinal dataset, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten (ECLS-K), this study explores the relationship between children's access to sweetened beverages at school in 5th and 8th grade, their purchases and total consumption of these beverages, and their weight. We find almost no evidence that availability of sweetened beverages for sale at school leads to heavier weight or greater risk of overweight or obesity among children. We also find limited evidence that availability of sweetened beverages for sale at school leads to higher total consumption of these beverages.
Oza-Frank, R, et al. Beverage displacement between elementary and middle school, 2004-2007. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2012;112(9):1390-1396.
Children’s milk consumption decreased between 5thand 8thgrade, and these decreases were larger among children who drank sweetened beverages daily. However, after controlling for demographic characteristics, changes in children’s milk consumption were not significantly related to changes in their consumption of sweetened beverages over time (β=0.005, p=0.81), while changes in milk consumption were positively related to changes in juice consumption (β=0.087, p<0.01). Observed decreases in average milk consumption from 5thto 8thgrade were not related to changes in sweetened beverage consumption. They were positively related to changes in fruit juice consumption, so not indicating displacement. Caloric beverages generally tended to increase or decrease in tandem, so focus must be placed on their role in children’s entire diet and on balancing them with food and total beverage intake.
Egner, R, et al. The school breakfast program: A view of the present and preparing for the future- a commentary. J Sch Health. 2014;84(7):417-420.
Project Title: Impacts of School Policies on Student Diet and Activity Behaviors and Obesity
ID: 5R01HD070738-04
Principal Investigator: Nanney, Marilyn S (University of Minnesota)
Funding Mechanism: PA-10-052; NICHD (FY2015, FY2014, FY2013, FY2012, FY2011) (Budget End Date March 31, 2015)
Study Aims: Team of investigators representing expertise in school nutrition and activity interventions, alcohol and obesity policy research and innovative methodologies propose aims that build upon recently published work linking state-level school obesity prevention policy environments and youth obesity prevalence which has received national attention. An advisory panel consisting of national and local advocacy and policy development experts will assist in the practical interpretation and dissemination of results. A serial cross-sectional study (1998-2010) that uniquely combines two survey data sets the Minnesota School Health Profiles and Minnesota Student Survey representing up to 300 schools and up to 136,00 12-18 year old students will be used to evaluate the impact of school nutrition- and activity-related policies upon students attending those schools. Additionally, using the national data set the School Health Programs and Policies Study a serial cross-sectional study (2000-2010) evaluating the translation of strong state policies (n=50) and their school districts (n=530) and schools (n=1,100) to identify the extent to which they align, will also be conducted. Tackling the childhood obesity epidemic demands innovative approaches, including environmental and policy changes in school settings. State and local entities have already engaged initiatives based upon varying levels of evidence. In the field of school policy evaluation, the emphasis has been on comprehensive wellness policy assessments, including the strength of those policies and implementation. To our knowledge, no one else has attempted to establish a link between school policy environments and student outcomes.