Evaluating Operation Good Food & Beverages, a Black Youth-Driven Public Advocacy Campaign.

Background: Food and beverage (F&B) marketing practices that contradict health guidelines are particularly concerning for children and adolescents, who are developmentally more susceptible than adults to persuasive advertising and to Black communities, due to ethnically-targeted marketing, contributing to higher rates of obesity and other diet-related chronic diseases. Accordingly, here we evaluated Operation Good Food and Beverages (OGF&B), an online social marketing campaign calling for shifting toward more marketing of healthier F&B to Black youth and Black communities.

Methods: OGF&B was developed and implemented by a multidisciplinary team of academic, advocacy, and advertising partners and active for four months in 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Black American Nutrition Scholar and Advocate: My Journey.

I started my journey as a nutrition scholar in 1974 when I began PhD studies at Cornell University. My journey has been rich with opportunity. I engaged in research on diet-related risks for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer, partly motivated by my strong commitment to addressing health disparities affecting Black Americans.

Mending the gap: Measurement needs to address policy implementation through a health equity lens.

Policies represent a key opportunity to improve the health outcomes of populations, and if implemented well, can reduce disparities affecting marginalized populations. Many policies are only evaluated on whether they elicit their intended health outcome. However, a lack of understanding regarding if and how they are implemented may hinder the intended impact overall and on addressing health disparities.

Advancing healthcare equity through dissemination and implementation science.

Objective: To provide guiding principles and recommendations for how approaches from the field of dissemination and implementation (D&I) science can advance healthcare equity.

Data Sources And Study Setting: This article, part of a special issue sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), is based on an outline drafted to support proceedings of the 2022 AHRQ Health Equity Summit and further revised to reflect input from Summit attendees.

Study Design: This is a narrative review of the current and potential applications of D&I approaches for understanding and advancing healthcare equity, followed by discussion and feedback with Summit attendees.

Community Health Workers to Increase Cancer Screening: 3 Community Guide Systematic Reviews.

Introduction: Many in the U.S. are not up to date with cancer screening.

Adaptation and implementation outcomes of a parenting program for low-income, ethnically diverse families delivered virtually versus in-person.

Driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, many in-person health behavior interventions were compelled to quickly pivot to a virtual format with little time or capacity to reflect on or examine possible equity-related implications of a format that required digital access and remote learning skills. Using a parenting program for low-income families as a case study, this paper (a) outlines the process of adapting the program from an in-person to a virtual format and (b) examines the equity-related implications of this adaptation. Parents Connect for Healthy Living (PConnect) is a 10-session empowerment-focused parenting intervention designed to promote family health for Head Start families.

Advancing Health Equity Efforts to Reduce Obesity: Changing the Course.

Population-based solutions are needed to stabilize and then reverse the continued upward trends in obesity prevalence in the US population and worldwide. This review focuses on the related, urgent issue of disparities in obesity prevalence affecting US racial/ethnic minority and other socially marginalized populations. The review provides background on these disparities from a health equity perspective and highlights evidence of progress in equity-focused obesity efforts.

The Racialized Marketing of Unhealthy Foods and Beverages: Perspectives and Potential Remedies.

We propose that marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to Black and Latino consumers results from the intersection of a business model in which profits come primarily from marketing an unhealthy mix of products, standard targeted marketing strategies, and societal forces of structural racism, and contributes to health disparities.

Assessing Racial and Ethnic Discrimination in Children: A Scoping Review of Available Measures for Child Health Disparities Research.

To characterize the availability, content, and psychometric properties of self-reported measures that assess race/ethnicity-related discrimination or psychosocial stress and have potential relevance to studies of health disparities in children and adolescents. Using PRISMA extension guidelines for scoping reviews, we searched Ovid Medline, CINAHL, PsychInfo, and Scopus databases from 1946 to April 20, 2020, using the search terms "stress," "child," "adolescents," "discrimination," and "psychometrics." We limited the search to articles in English, with children and adolescents, in the United States.

Emotional Eating Predicts Weight Regain Among Black Women in the SisterTalk Intervention.

Objective: This study aimed to assess effects of emotional eating and stress on weight change among Black women in a culturally tailored weight-control program.

Methods: SisterTalk, a cable-TV-delivered weight-control randomized trial, included 331 Black women (aged 18-75 years; BMI ≥ 25 kg/m) in Boston, Massachusetts. BMI and waist circumference (WC) were assessed at baseline and 3, 8, and 12 months post randomization.

Black Community Conversations About Opposing Ethnically Targeted Marketing of Unhealthy Foods and Beverages.

Efforts to reduce disparities in obesity prevalence affecting Black Americans are having limited success. One reason for this may be the disproportionate, ethnically targeted marketing of foods and beverages high in fat and sugar (FBHFS) to Black consumers. Such marketing promotes high consumption of FBHFS, leading to excess caloric intake and unintentional weight gain.

Implementation science should give higher priority to health equity.

Background: There is growing urgency to tackle issues of equity and justice in the USA and worldwide. Health equity, a framing that moves away from a deficit mindset of what society is doing poorly (disparities) to one that is positive about what society can achieve, is becoming more prominent in health research that uses implementation science approaches. Equity begins with justice-health differences often reflect societal injustices.

Expanding Implementation Research to Prevent Chronic Diseases in Community Settings.

Chronic disease prevention continues to be inadequate, overall and in achieving health equity, in spite of the many evidence-based practices and policies (EBPPs) available to address risk behaviors such as unhealthful eating, lack of physical activity, and tobacco use. Although clinical settings are needed for EBPPs that involve medical procedures such as immunization or early detection, dissemination of EBPPs can be effective in a variety of settings such as schools and childcare centers, worksites, social service organizations, and religious organizations. More implementation research is needed to meet challenges of effective application of EBPPs in such community settings, in which primary missions, capacity, cultures, and values do not focus on health services delivery.

Approaches to Defining Healthy Diets: A Background Paper for the International Expert Consultation on Sustainable Healthy Diets.

Background: Healthy diets promote optimal growth and development and prevent malnutrition in all its forms, including undernutrition, obesity, and diet-related noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).

Objective: This background paper for the International Expert Consultation on Sustainable Healthy Diets characterizes healthy diets and their implications for food system sustainability.

Methods: Three complementary approaches to defining healthy diets are compared: World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines or recommendations developed between 1996 and 2019; 2017 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) risk factor study estimates of diet-related risk-outcome associations; and analyses associating indices of whole dietary patterns with health outcomes in population studies and clinical trials.

Economics of Interventions to Increase Active Travel to School: A Community Guide Systematic Review.

Context: The number of children who bicycle or walk to school has steadily declined in the U.S. and other high-income countries.

The hunger-obesity paradox: Exploring food banking system characteristics and obesity inequities among food-insecure pantry clients.

Purpose: Heightened obesity risk among food-insecure food pantry clients is a health equity issue because the co-occurrence of obesity and hunger is deeply-rooted in systematic social disadvantage and historical oppression. This qualitative study examined key stakeholders' perspectives of the relationship between the U.S.

Childhood Obesity Evidence Base Project: Methods for Taxonomy Development for Application in Taxonomic Meta-Analysis.

Meta-analysis has been used to examine the effectiveness of childhood obesity prevention efforts, yet traditional conventional meta-analytic methods restrict the kinds of studies included, and either narrowly define mechanisms and agents of change, or examine the effectiveness of whole interventions as opposed to the specific actions that comprise interventions. Taxonomic meta-analytic methods widen the aperture of what can be included in a meta-analysis data set, allowing for inclusion of many types of interventions and study designs. The National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research Childhood Obesity Evidence Base (COEB) project focuses on interventions intended to prevent childhood obesity in children 2-5 years old who have an outcome measure of BMI.

Childhood Obesity Evidence Base Project: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of a New Taxonomy of Intervention Components to Improve Weight Status in Children 2-5 Years of Age, 2005-2019.

To evaluate the efficacy of childhood obesity interventions and conduct a taxonomy of intervention components that are most effective in changing obesity-related health outcomes in children 2-5 years of age. Comprehensive searches located 51 studies from 18,335 unique records. Eligible studies: (1) assessed children aged 2-5, living in the United States; (2) evaluated an intervention to improve weight status; (3) identified a same-aged comparison group; (4) measured BMI; and (5) were available between January 2005 and August 2019.

The "secret sauce" for a mentored training program: qualitative perspectives of trainees in implementation research for cancer control.

Background: Mentored training approaches help build capacity for research through mentoring networks and skill building activities. Capacity for dissemination and implementation (D&I) research in cancer is needed and mentored training programs have been developed. Evaluation of mentored training programs through quantitative approaches often provides us with information on "what" improved for participants.

The American Heart Association 2030 Impact Goal: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association.

Each decade, the American Heart Association (AHA) develops an Impact Goal to guide its overall strategic direction and investments in its research, quality improvement, advocacy, and public health programs. Guided by the AHA's new Mission Statement, to be a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives, the 2030 Impact Goal is anchored in an understanding that to achieve cardiovascular health for all, the AHA must include a broader vision of health and well-being and emphasize health equity. In the next decade, by 2030, the AHA will strive to equitably increase healthy life expectancy beyond current projections, with global and local collaborators, from 66 years of age to at least 68 years of age across the United States and from 64 years of age to at least 67 years of age worldwide.

New research directions on disparities in obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Obesity and type 2 diabetes disproportionately impact U.S. racial and ethnic minority communities and low-income populations.

A Framework for Increasing Equity Impact in Obesity Prevention.

One of the most pressing unmet challenges for preventing and controlling epidemic obesity is ensuring that socially disadvantaged populations benefit from relevant public health interventions. Obesity levels are disproportionately high in ethnic minority, low-income, and other socially marginalized US population groups. Current policy, systems, and environmental change interventions target obesity-promoting aspects of physical, economic, social, and information environments but do not necessarily account for inequities in environmental contexts and, therefore, may perpetuate disparities.

Overcoming Inequities in Obesity: What Don't We Know That We Need to Know?

Efforts to combat the U.S. obesity epidemic have been ongoing in earnest for nearly two decades, informed by a substantial body of knowledge and guided by numerous programmatic and policy recommendations.