The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Diabetes Initiative: demonstration projects emphasizing self-management.

Purpose: The purpose of the Diabetes Initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is to demonstrate feasible and sustainable approaches to promoting diabetes self-management in primary care and community settings.

Methods: The Diabetes Initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation includes 14 demonstration projects in primary care settings and in community-clinical partnerships. Projects serve predominantly indigent populations from varied cultural and linguistic backgrounds in urban, rural, and frontier settings around the United States.

Rural family caregivers and health behaviors: results from an epidemiologic survey.

This study examined health behaviors in a sample of rural family caregivers. In a community telephone survey of rural Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee, respondents were asked about their health, physical activity, nutrition, health providers, and family caregiving. Among 1,234 survey respondents, 12% self-identified as family caregivers.

The evaluation of comprehensive cancer control efforts: useful techniques and unique requirements.

This article discusses evaluation of comprehensive cancer control efforts as developed in the United States by involved partners at all levels -- community, regional, state, tribal, territorial, and national. Evaluation of comprehensive cancer control can concern the evaluation of a program, a plan or activities from a plan. In its development, it is grounded in both theory and practice, and the results are used in program development and implementation to document activities, inform decision making, and demonstrate accountability.

Measuring cues for healthy choices on restaurant menus: development and testing of a measurement instrument.

Purpose: To develop and test the Menu Checklist, an instrument to be used by community members to assess cues for healthy choices in restaurants.

Design: Menus from 14 restaurants were coded independently by two trained community reviewers to test the interrater reliability of the instrument.

Setting: A low-income, urban, African-American community in Los Angeles, California.

A community-based approach to promoting walking in rural areas.

Background: Ecologic models are often recommended to promote physical activity, yet sparse data exist on their effectiveness.

Design: A quasi-experimental design examined changes in walking behavior in six rural intervention communities in the Missouri "bootheel" region and in six comparison communities in Arkansas and Tennessee.

Setting/ Participants: The communities ranged in population from 2399 to 17,642; interventions focused on adults aged >/=18 years.

The epidemiology of walking for physical activity in the United States.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to describe the epidemiology of walking for physical activity among respondents to the U.S. Physical Activity Study.

Process evaluation of a monitoring log system for community coalition activities: five-year results and lessons learned.

Purpose: Coalitions can be a successful way to promote healthy initiatives throughout a community. To properly measure the success of coalition-based interventions, it is important to conduct a process evaluation of coalition activities and establish a system for evaluating outcomes. This article describes a process evaluation of a monitoring and feedback system for community coalitions targeting chronic disease risk reduction.