NUTRITION AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY PUBLICATIONS

NEWThe Transportation Prescription: How bold transportation policies can make all communities healthier and stronger

July 2009

A report by PolicyLink and Prevention Institute, commissioned by the Convergence Partnership, is a policy guide that analyzes the intersection of transportation, health and equity, providing key policy and program recommendations that can improve health outcomes in vulnerable communities, create economic opportunity, and enhance environmental quality. This report also features a foreword by Rep. Jim Oberstar, Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and one of the primary authors of the upcoming federal transportation bill.

NEWFUNDING PREVENTION IN CALIFORNIA: LESSONS FROM PAST EFFORTS TO RAISE REVENUES

May 2009

Prepared by Prevention Institute and Berkeley Media Studies Group, this report explores past efforts to levy taxes and fees to identify and analyze lessons for future proposals to create funding streams for prevention in California.  The report focuses primarily on past public health initiatives that attempted to tax or impose fees on consumer goods or businesses, including tobacco, soft drinks, snack foods, alcohol, and lead-based product manufacturers.

NEW Setting the Record Straight: Nutritionists Define Healthful Food

March 2009

There is growing awareness and consensus among health and nutrition professionals that healthful food is essential, not only to healthy lives, but to a healthy society, environment, and economy. 

Setting the Record Straight, puts forth a definition of healthful food that looks beyond nutrients to acknowledge that truly healthful food comes from a food system where food is produced, processed, transported, and marketed in ways that are environmentally sound, sustainable and just.

Promising Strategies for Creating Healthy Eating and Active Living Environments

May 2008

is a newly released resource, prepared by Prevention Institute on behalf of the Healthy Eating Active Living Convergence Partnership, to help build momentum for environmental change and policy approaches to improving health. Promising Strategies was created with input from diverse stakeholders and constituencies representing fields such as public health, sustainable food systems, economic development, transportation, planning, climate change, among others–engaged in accelerating and supporting the movement for healthier communities. The document thus delineates crosscutting strategies that have the potential to engage diverse constituencies and address a diversity of issues that impact healthy eating and active living. Promising Strategies serves as a launch pad for further discussion, a catalyst to understand how specific efforts fit into a broader picture, and identifies areas for collaboration across sectors and fields. It can serve as a menu of options for various audiences to advance or expand environmental change and policy approaches. The strategies highlighted in the document focus on environments such as the community, schools, workplaces, healthcare, government, and media. Promising Strategies is available free of cost at: http://www.convergencepartnership.org/.  

Strategies for Enhancing the Built Environment to Support Healthy Eating and Active Living

May 2008

is the first of a set of issue briefs prepared by Prevention Institute on behalf of the Healthy Eating Active Living Convergence Partnership.  This issue brief focuses on opportunities to support healthy eating and active living through issues related to the built environment and places a similar emphasis on cross-sectoral and environmental change approaches. The brief is available free of cost at: http://www.convergencepartnership.org/.

Healthy and Active Before 5: Action Plan to Reduce Childhood Obesity in Contra Costa County

January 2008

On behalf of the Healthy and Active Before 5 collaborative, Prevention Institute fascilitated a year-long planning process to develop an action plan to combat early childhood obesity in Contra Costa County, California. The resulting action plan offers a framework for creating food and activity environments in neighborhoods and key institutions that will motivate and support children and families to adopt healthy behaviors. 

Mapping the Movement for Healthy Food and Activity Environments in the United States Overview

January 2008

This document summarizes the innovative efforts of 11 organizations advocating for improvements in food and activity environments within predominantly low-income neighborhoods and with African American and Latino residents. Each of the 11 community groups take on tough policy and
environmental change issues like increasing access to healthy food, addressing safety concerns, and cultivating opportunities for walking and bicycling. In both rural settings and urban neighborhoods throughout the country, these snapshots paint a picture of pervasive challenges to healthy eating and active living and explore creative solutions to improve health and quality of life.

The Links Between the Neighborhood Food Environment and Childhood Nutrition

November 2007

Research is increasingly showing that those at greatest risk for dietary-related diseases - low-income children and families - face a significant but little understood impediment to getting healthy foods: their neighborhood food environment.  This paper identifies key investigations of the neighborhood food environment, examines current efforts to bring about improvements, and discusses new research and policy priorities.

Updating Nutrition Education in the Food Stamp Program: A FARM BILL OPPORTUNITY (PDF)

June 2007

A Policy Paper from Prevention Institute and California Association of Nutrition and Activity Providers (CAN-Act) on the connection between the obesity epidemic and the role of the community.

Healthy Eating & Physical Activity: Addressing Inequities in Urban Environments

May 2007

On January 11-12, 2006 Prevention Institute convened From Pilots to Practice: Maximizing the impact of efforts to improve access to healthy food and safe places for physical activity in low-income communities. Funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The California Endowment, the convening brought together 19 community advocates and  academics from across the country to discuss strategies for improving nutrition and activity environments on a neighborhood level and how to best achieve large scale sustainability of these improvements. The resulting document, authored by Prevention Institute, provides guidance for fostering the growing momentum around improving nutrition and physical activity environments in socially and economically disadvantaged urban communities.

Where's The Fruit? Fruit Content of the Most Highly-Advertised Children's Food and Beverages

January 2006

A study conducted by Prevention Institute revealing that over half of the most aggressively marketed children's foods advertising fruit on the packaging actually contained no fruit ingredients.

Setting the Bar: Recommendations for Food and Beverage Industry Action

January 2006

Where's the Fruit? companion piece providing recommendations to help the food industry better address nutrition labeling and healthy marketing to children.

The Community Food Security News (PDF)

Winter 2006

This community food security newsletter, published by The Community Food Security Coalition, published two Prevention Institute authored articles - Cultivating Common Ground between Sustainable Agriculture and Public Health Communities (pp.3) and FoodMed Conference (pp.7) - in its Winter 2006 publication.

The O Word: Why the Focus on Obesity is Harmful to Community Health

September 2005

An article published in the September issue of Californian Journal of Health Promotion 2005 that sheds light on the five unintended consequences of our focus on “obesity”.

Cultivating Common Ground: Linking Health and Sustainable Agriculture

September 2004

Findings and recommendations to build a collaborative movement for a just, sustainable, health-promoting food system. Link here for the Executive Summary (PDF).

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