Community Member and Stakeholder Perspectives on a Healthy Environment Initiative in North Carolina.

Introduction: The North Carolina Community Transformation Grant Project (NC-CTG) aimed to implement policy, system, and environmental strategies to promote healthy eating, active living, tobacco-free living, and clinical and community preventive services to advance health equity and reduce health disparities for the state's most vulnerable communities. This article presents findings from the Health Equity Collaborative Evaluation and Implementation Project, which assessed community and stakeholder perceptions of health equity for 3 NC-CTG strategies: farmers markets, shared use, and smoke-free multiunit housing.

Methods: In a triangulated qualitative evaluation, 6 photo elicitation (PE) sessions among 45 community members in 1 urban and 3 rural counties and key informant interviews among 22 stakeholders were conducted.

'I learned to accept every part of myself': the transformative impact of a theatre-based sexual health and HIV prevention programme.

Theatre-based interventions have been used in health promotion activities among young people to address HIV and sexual health. In this study, we explored the experience of undergraduate student performers participating in a theatre-based HIV prevention and sexual health education intervention for high school students in the USA. Undergraduate students enrolled in a credit-bearing course to learn about HIV and sexual health, participatory theatre and health education techniques.

Neighborhood socioeconomic status and food environment: a 20-year longitudinal latent class analysis among CARDIA participants.

Cross-sectional studies suggest that neighborhood socioeconomic (SES) disadvantage is associated with obesogenic food environments. Yet, it is unknown how exposure to neighborhood SES patterning through adulthood corresponds to food environments that also change over time. We used latent class analysis (LCA) to classify participants in the U.

Cancer care research in North Carolina: the state of the state.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in North Carolina. This issue brief summarizes cancer statistics for the state; highlights important issues facing cancer patients, caregivers, providers, and policy makers; discusses the state's novel resources for cancer care research; and explores ways of managing this public health problem in order to improve outcomes for the people of North Carolina.

Effects of distance to care and rural or urban residence on receipt of radiation therapy among North Carolina Medicare enrollees with breast cancer.

Background: Distance to oncology service providers and rurality may affect receipt of guideline-recommended radiation therapy (RT), but the extent to which these factors affect the care of Medicare-insured patients is unknown.

Methods: Using cancer registry data linked to Medicare claims from the Integrated Cancer Information and Surveillance System (ICISS), we identified all women aged 65 years or older who were diagnosed with stage I, II, or III breast cancer from 2003 through 2005, who had Medicare claims through 2006, and who were clinically eligible for RT. We geocoded the address of each RT service provider's practice location and calculated the travel distance from each patient's residential address to the nearest RT provider.

Feasibility and promise of a 6-week program to encourage physical activity and reduce joint symptoms among elderly breast cancer survivors on aromatase inhibitor therapy.

Background: National guidelines suggest that women with hormone receptor positive breast cancer be considered for adjuvant endocrine treatment with an aromatase inhibitor (AI). Joint symptoms (arthralgia) are a common AI side-effect. There is a need for effective approaches to arthralgia management that enable survivors to remain on AI therapy while optimizing as pain-free a life as possible.

Psychometric properties of the modified RESIDE physical activity questionnaire among low-income overweight women.

Objectives: This study explored the criterion-related validity and test-retest reliability of the modified RESIDential Environment physical activity questionnaire and whether the instrument's validity varied by body mass index, education, race/ethnicity, or employment status.

Design: Validation study using baseline data collected for randomized trial of a weight loss intervention.

Methods: Participants recruited from health departments wore an ActiGraph accelerometer and self-reported non-occupational walking, moderate and vigorous physical activity on the modified RESIDential Environment questionnaire.

Addressing rural health disparities through policy change in the stroke belt.

Context: Obesity-prevention policies are needed, particularly in low-income rural areas of the southern United States, where obesity and chronic disease prevalence are high. In 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued the "Common Community Measures for Obesity Prevention" (COCOMO), a set of 24 recommended community-level obesity-prevention strategies.

Objective: A variety of stakeholders in Lenoir County, North Carolina, were surveyed and interviewed, ranking the winnability, defined as feasibility and acceptability, of each of the 24 COCOMO-recommended strategies based on local culture, infrastructure, funding, and community support.

Translation of a behavioral weight loss intervention for mid-life, low-income women in local health departments.

Objective: To translate a behavioral weight loss intervention for mid-life, low-income women in real world settings.

Design And Methods: In this pragmatic clinical trial, we randomly selected six North Carolina county health departments and trained their current staff to deliver a 16-session evidence-based behavioral weight loss intervention (special intervention, SI). SI weight loss outcomes were compared to a delayed intervention (DI) control group.

Report on CTSA consortium use of the community engagement consulting service.

Introduction: The CTSA Community Engagement Consultative Service (CECS) is a national partnership designed to improve community engaged research (CEnR) through expert consultation. This report assesses the feasibility of CECS and presents findings from 2008 to 2009.

Methodology: A coordinating center and five regional coordinating sites managed the service.

Exploratory validation of the Fruit and Vegetable Neophobia Instrument among third- to fifth-grade students.

Children's unwillingness to try new foods, or food neophobia, may impact dietary behaviors. As part of an effort to evaluate Farm to School programs, the Fruit and Vegetable Neophobia Instrument (FVNI) was developed to measure student attitudes toward new fruits and vegetables. A self-administered, paper/pencil, 18-item questionnaire, the FVNI was adapted from the Food Neophobia Scale.

Seeds of HOPE: a model for addressing social and economic determinants of health in a women's obesity prevention project in two rural communities.

Socioeconomic status (SES) and income disparity are strong predictors of health, and health promotion interventions that address them are more likely to be meaningful to participants and to sustain positive effects. Seeds of HOPE is an innovative project that is the result of a long-standing collaboration between the University of North Carolina (UNC) Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Prevention Research Center, and communities in rural North Carolina. Initial formative work, including key informant interviews, community surveys, and focus groups, strengthened our understanding of the link between hope and health and the importance of addressing social and economic issues as part of our health promotion interventions.