A Hospital-Based Interdisciplinary Model for Increasing Nurses' Engagement in Legislative Advocacy.

The Legislative Action Interest Group (LAIG) is a hospital-based health policy forum that engages nurses in exploring clinical implications of existing and pending health policies and regulations, while also creating a feedback loop to inform policy makers about the realities nursing practice and patient care. The LAIG is a collaborative effort between the hospital's Department of Nursing and Patient Care Services and the Office of Government Relations at an academic children's hospital. Nurses participating in the LAIG forums build a working knowledge of health policy and can articulate the practice realities for policy decision makers.

Factors associated with overweight among urban American Indian adolescents: findings from Project EAT.

Objectives: To determine the prevalence of overweight in a sample of urban American Indian adolescents and identify associated behavioral, personal, and socioenvironmental factors.

Design And Participants: Participants were 246 American Indian boys and girls from the Saint Paul-Minneapolis metropolitan area of Minnesota who completed classroom surveys and anthropometric measurements as part of Project EAT (Eating Among Teens), a population-based study of adolescent nutrition and weight.

Measures: Survey items assessed behavioral factors (physical activity, television/video viewing, snacking and meal patterns, weight control behaviors), personal factors (body satisfaction, nutrition knowledge, nutrition/fitness attitudes, self-efficacy to make healthy food choices, perceived benefits/barriers to healthy eating), and socioenvironmental factors (family meal routines, family connectedness, parental attitudes regarding nutrition/fitness, availability of household foods, peer attitudes about weight and fitness).