Working with community organizations for nutrition intervention

Effective community nutrition interventions require nutritionand health professionals to collaborate with organizations thatserve as hosts or loci for programs. These organizations includeworkplaces, schools, cafeterias, restaurants and supermarkets.Although nutritionists need to develop collaborative workingrelationships with community organizations, they often lackknowledge about organizational change and experience difficultyinitiating and maintaining relationships. This paper describesconcepts from theories of organizational change and an exampleof how they were used to help formulate guidelines for developingand analyzing successful collaborative relationships. In a consensusdevelopment workshop guidelines were developed in five areas:(1) goals for mutual relationships; (2) initiation: decidingwhether to work with an organization; (3) strategies for workingwith host organizations; (4) identifying sources of resistanceto change; and (5) warning signs and strategic retreat. Applyingthese guidelines should result in more effective collaborativerelationships for community nutrition education.     

The 5 A day Virtual Classroom: an on-line strategy to promote healthful eating

Communications technology can help stimulate youth to become involved in health promotion. This article reports on an innovative, Internet-based nutrition program that encouraged children to be advocates for policies that promote eating more fruits and vegetables, the 5 A Day Virtual Classroom. Through this program, students from across the United States discussed the recommendation of 5 A Day at the same time in a classroom without walls. In September 1997 children were asked, "If you were President Clinton, how would you get kids across the country to eat 5 A Day?" Based on content analysis of responses, this article suggests strategies that policymakers could use to encourage children to consume more fruits and vegetables. Approximately 2,600 students participated; 635 entries and 910 suggestions were received. The suggestion categories cited most often were mass media (19.8%), economic issues (15.4%), and social influence (13.8%). The most frequently mentioned specific ideas were to reward children for eating fruits and vegetables and to use presidential authority. Some regional, age, and gender patterns were found. Findings support the potential impact on health education of the 5 A Day Virtual Classroom and of interventions based on communications technology.     

The California Health Interview Survey 2001: translation of a major survey for California's multiethnic population

The cultural and linguistic diversity of the U.S. population presents challenges to the design and implementation of population-based surveys that serve to inform public policies. Information derived from such surveys may be less than representative if groups with limited or no English language skills are not included. The California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), first administered in 2001, is a population-based health survey of more than 55,000 California households. This article describes the process that the designers of CHIS 2001 underwent in culturally adapting the survey and translating it into an unprecedented number of languages: Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Khmer. The multiethnic and multilingual CHIS 2001 illustrates the importance of cultural and linguistic adaptation in raising the quality of population-based surveys, especially when the populations they intend to represent are as diverse as California's.