Policy, Systems, and Environmental Approaches to Obesity Prevention: Translating and Disseminating Evidence from Practice.

To reduce obesity prevalence, public health practitioners are intervening to change health behaviors as well as the policies, systems, and environments (PSEs) that support healthy behaviors. Although the number of recommended PSE intervention strategies continues to grow, limited guidance is available on how to implement those strategies in practice. This article describes the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Center for Training and Research Translation's (Center TRT's) approach to reviewing, translating, and disseminating practitioner-developed interventions, with the goal of providing more practical guidance on how to implement PSE intervention strategies in real-world practice.

The role of community, state, territorial, and tribal public health in obesity prevention.

This article explores how governmental public health authorities can contribute to public health efforts to address obesity by monitoring the prevalence of obesity and associated risk factors, investigating the contributing factors, informing the public, and working with the citizens in their jurisdiction to develop solutions that fit the needs and sensibilities of the people.

A systematic approach to evaluating public health training: the obesity prevention in public health course.

Objective: Public health practitioners require new knowledge and skills to address the multilevel factors contributing to obesity. This article presents the systematic approach the Center of Excellence for Training and Research Translation (Center TRT) used both to assess practitioners' competencies to lead public health obesity prevention initiatives and to evaluate its annual, competency-based obesity prevention course.

Design: In 2006, Center TRT identified priority public health competencies for obesity prevention and then planned 7 annual courses to address the priority competencies progressively over time.

An evaluation framework for obesity prevention policy interventions.

As the emphasis on preventing obesity has grown, so have calls for interventions that extend beyond individual behaviors and address changes in environments and policies. Despite the need for policy action, little is known about policy approaches that are most effective at preventing obesity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and others are funding the implementation and evaluation of new obesity prevention policies, presenting a distinct opportunity to learn from these practice-based initiatives and build the body of evidence-based approaches.

Applying the RE-AIM framework to assess the public health impact of policy change.

Background And Purpose: Planning and evaluation models have been developed to assess the public health impact of health promotion interventions. However, few have been applied to health policies. There is an important need for models to help design and evaluate health policies.

An intervention to promote healthy weight: Nutrition and Physical Activity Self-Assessment for Child Care (NAP SACC) theory and design.

Health professionals are faced with the growing challenge of addressing childhood overweight. Few overweight prevention efforts have targeted young children, particularly children in child care settings. We describe the theory and development of a novel nutrition and physical activity environmental intervention.

Nutrition and physical activity self-assessment for child care (NAP SACC): results from a pilot intervention.

Objective: To determine the feasibility, acceptability, and reported impact of a nutrition and physical activity environmental intervention in child care.

Design: Self-assessment instrument completed pre- and post-intervention by randomly assigned intervention and comparison child care centers.

Setting: Child care centers in 8 counties across North Carolina.