Quality of Health Education Teacher Preparation Program Curricula Throughout the United States.

Background: Undergraduate majors in education, specifically in school health education (HE), have declined considerably in the United States. Reductions in state and federal funding for K-12 public education and increased demands on educators to prioritize standardized academic outcomes versus focusing on the whole child encompass many factors leading to fewer qualified teachers and reduced quality of HE delivery within schools.

Methods: A content analysis of over 300 HE teacher preparation programs throughout the United States was conducted from 2019 to 2020 to assess available and required curriculum for pre-service HE teachers.

Community Solutions to Increase the Healthfulness of Grocery Stores: Perspectives of Immigrant Parents.

Grocery store environments are recognized as one of the most crucial community settings for developing and maintaining healthy nutritional behaviors in children. This is especially true for disadvantaged ethnic minority families, such as immigrants, who reside in the Detroit Metropolitan area and have historically experienced inequities that result in poor health outcomes. Rates of obesity and type II diabetes have affected Detroit 38% more than the rest of the state and nationwide.

Enhanced Measurement of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Marketing to Young Immigrant Children in Grocery Store Environments.

The marketing of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages (SSBs) within grocers is an obesogenic factor that negatively impacts children's nutritional behavior, specifically for people from racial and ethnic minority groups, such as immigrants. We aimed to develop and employ a methodology that more precisely assesses the availability, price, and promotion of SSBs to young immigrant children within independently owned grocery stores. A case comparison design was used to explore the differences in the grocery store landscape of SSB marketing by conducting an enhanced Nutrition Environment Measures Survey-SSB (NEMS-SSB) within 30 grocery stores in the Hispanic and Latino enclaves in Southwest Detroit, in the Arab and Chaldean enclaves in North-central Detroit, and in Warren, Hamtramck, and Dearborn, in comparison with 48 grocers in Metro Detroit.

Using the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, and Sustainment (EPIS) Framework to Advance the Science and Practice of Healthy Food Retail.

Although healthy food retail strategies are widely used, there appears to be a limited understanding of the processes and determinants for successful adoption, implementation, and sustainment. To fill this gap, we recommend the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, and Sustainment (EPIS) framework to be used to advance the science and practice of healthy food retail. In this perspective, we: (1) introduce EPIS and describe why it was chosen as a recommended implementation science framework for healthy food retail, (2) highlight healthy food retail evidence supporting EPIS, and (3) discuss research and practice needs moving forward.

Refining the Nutrition Environment Measures Survey (NEMS) for Healthy Community Stores: Adaptations to Capture Alternative Food Retailers and Align with Dietary Guidelines.

Inadequate consumption of healthy food is an ongoing public health issue in the United States. Food availability measures of supply versus consumption of healthy foods are disconnected in many studies. There is a need for an objective assessment of the food environment in order to assess how the food supply aligns with the Healthy Eating Index (HEI).

A Commentary on the Healthy Community Stores Case Study Project: Implications for Retailers, Policy, and Future Research.

In the United States, low-income, underserved rural and urban settings experience poor access to healthy, affordable food. Introducing new food outlets in these locations has shown mixed results for improving healthy food consumption. The Healthy Community Stores Case Study Project (HCSCSP) explored an alternative strategy: supporting mission-driven, locally owned, healthy community food stores to improve healthy food access.

Balancing Mission and Margins: What Makes Healthy Community Food Stores Successful.

Mission-driven, independently-owned community food stores have been identified as a potential solution to improve access to healthy foods, yet to date there is limited information on what factors contribute to these stores' success and failure. Using a multiple case study approach, this study examined what makes a healthy community food store successful and identified strategies for success in seven community stores in urban areas across the United States. We used Stake's multiple case study analysis approach to identify the following key aims that contributed to community store success across all cases: (1) making healthy food available, (2) offering healthy foods at affordable prices, and (3) reaching community members with limited economic resources.

The Association Between Home or Community Garden Access and Adolescent Health.

Little is known about the influence of home or community garden (HCG) access on adolescent health. The objective of this study was to determine the association between adolescent self-rated health, nutrition knowledge, attitudes, and intake with HCG access. Urban high school students (n = 401) completed a questionnaire prior to a nutrition education intervention.

Forms of Community Engagement in Neighborhood Food Retail: Healthy Community Stores Case Study Project.

Community engagement is well established as a key to improving public health. Prior food environment research has largely studied community engagement as an intervention component, leaving much unknown about how food retailers may already engage in this work. The purpose of this study was to explore the community engagement activities employed by neighborhood food retailers located in lower-income communities with explicit health missions to understand the ways stores involve and work with their communities.

Assessing the Influence of Food Insecurity and Retail Environments as a Proxy for Structural Racism on the COVID-19 Pandemic in an Urban Setting.

A collaborative partnership launched the Great Grocer Project (GGP) in March 2021 in Detroit, Michigan where health inequities, including deaths due to COVID-19, have historically been politically determined and informed by socially entrenched norms. Institutional and structural racism has contributed to a lack of diversity in store ownership among Detroit grocers and limited access to high-quality, affordable healthy foods as well as disparate food insecurity among Detroit residents. The GGP seeks to promote Detroit's healthy grocers to improve community health and economic vitality through research, programs, and policies that have the potential to advance health equity.

Increasing Healthy Food Access for Low-Income Communities: Protocol of the Healthy Community Stores Case Study Project.

Improving healthy food access in low-income communities continues to be a public health challenge. One strategy for improving healthy food access has been to introduce community food stores, with the mission of increasing healthy food access; however, no study has explored the experiences of different initiatives and models in opening and sustaining healthy food stores. This study used a case study approach to understand the experiences of healthy food stores in low-income communities.

Development of a School Health Policy Implementation Survey: A Delphi Study.

Data on school health policy implementation are limited due to the absence of a validated measurement tool. The purpose of this study was to create and pilot a school health policy implementation survey. A modified, four-round Delphi process was used to achieve consensus on content and format of the survey.

Nutrition Supports Deconstructed and Disrupted: An Evaluation of a Multilevel School-Based Intervention during the Time of COVID.

The Best Food Forward (BFF) project aims to provide multiple nutrition supports and interventions to improve family food security (FS) and health outcomes associated with FS within two metropolitan school districts. A quasi-experimental time-series design guided a multilevel evaluation for BFF through surveys, biometric screenings, focus groups, and observations among a random sample of caregiver-child dyads. FS, utilization of school meal programs, and nutrition behaviors were observed and analyzed at three time points: preintervention, postintervention pre-COVID-19, and postintervention post-COVID-19.

Food insecurity in Detroit: exploring the relationship between patient-reported food insecurity and proximity to healthful grocery stores.

Objective: The objective of the current study was to determine if patients of a large health care system in Detroit who self-identify as food insecure live further away from healthy grocery stores compared with food secure patients. Second, we explored whether food insecurity and distance to healthy grocery stores are related to ecological measures of vehicle availability in the area of residence.

Design: A secondary data analysis that uses baseline data from a pilot intervention/feasibility study.

Corner Store Owners as Health Promotion Agents in Low-Income Communities.

Reports of small business owner motivations for participation in health promotion interventions are rarely reported in the literature, particularly in relation to healthy eating interventions. This study explicates and defines the development of healthy corner stores as community-based enterprises (CBEs) within eight low-income, suburban communities. CBEs are defined as community-oriented small businesses with a common goal to improve population health.

Policy, systems, and environmentally oriented school-based obesity prevention: opportunities and challenges.

Public health is increasingly emphasizing policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) change as a key strategy for population-level health promotion and disease prevention. When applied to childhood obesity, this strategy typically involves school systems, since children spend large portions of their days in school and are heavily influenced by this environment. While most school systems have implemented nutrition education and physical activity programs for some time, their understanding and use of PSE approaches to obesity prevention is accelerating based on several large federally funded initiatives.

Partnering with community institutions to increase access to healthful foods across municipalities.

Background: Low-income and minority communities have higher rates of nutrition-related chronic diseases than do high-income and nonminority communities and often have reduced availability to healthful foods. Corner store initiatives have been proposed as a strategy to improve access to healthful foods in these communities, yet few studies evaluating these initiatives have been published.

Community Context: Suburban Cook County, Illinois, encompasses 125 municipalities with a population of more than 2 million.