Health Food, Healthy Schools and Healthy Communities

描述(由申请人提供) 社会和建筑环境影响食物消费模式，进而影响疾病的发生和公众健康。当环境因素使人们很难获得健康的食物选择时，健康差距就会出现。影响饮食选择的获取因素包括健康食品的成本、可获得性和实际可获得性。缺乏负担得起的健康食物来源的社区的居民可能会经历更高的超重和糖尿病发生率，这是因为新鲜水果、蔬菜和全谷物的消费与高热量、高脂肪、高糖和低其他营养的食物的消费不同。然而，如果社区成员积极参与制定社区营养规范并影响增加负担得起的健康食品供应的政策，由这些因素创造的当地营养环境就可以改变。这种积极的干预措施有可能减少困扰低收入社区和有色人种社区的超重和糖尿病的健康差距。 该项目的目标是促进由社区推动的积极改变学校和社区的当地营养环境，这些学校和社区不成比例地遭受与饮食有关的不良健康状况的影响。该项目将评估这些学校和社区的获取因素；提高对营养、环境和食物获取的认识；制定和实施干预战略；并评估这些战略对环境和政策的影响。活动包括培训低收入的非裔美国人和拉丁裔学生、家长和居民进行社区和学校食品评估；制定适当和可行的行动计划，以解决营养不良的环境和政策；以及建立当地社区营养咨询委员会，以动员努力推进干预战略。该项目的假设是：1)通过参与社区和学校食品评估以及建立社区营养理事会，学校和社区成员将提高对由于无法获得促进健康的食品而造成的健康差距的认识和知识；2)提高认识并制定社区主导的环境和政策变化战略，进而改善营养环境，减少超重和糖尿病的风险因素。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant) The social and built environments affect food consumption patterns that influence disease occurrence and public health. Health disparities arise when environmental factors make it difficult to access healthy food choices. Access factors that influence dietary choices include the cost, availability and physical accessibility of healthy foods. Residents of neighborhoods that lack affordable sources of healthy food may experience higher rates of overweight and diabetes, resulting from differences in the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains versus foods that are high in calories, added fat, and sugars, and low in other nutrients. The local nutrition environments created by such factors can, however, be changed if community members are actively involved in shaping community nutrition norms and influencing policies that increase the availability of affordable healthy foods. Such proactive intervention has the potential to reduce the health disparities for overweight and diabetes that plague low-income communities and communities of color. The goal of the project is to facilitate positive community-driven changes in local nutrition environments in schools and communities that suffer disproportionately from diet-related poor health conditions. The project will evaluate access factors in those schools and communities; raise nutrition, environmental and food access awareness; develop and implement intervention strategies; and assess the environmental and policy impact of those strategies. Activities include the training of low-income African-American and Latino students, parents, and residents to undertake community and school food assessments; the development of appropriate and feasible action plans to address poor nutrition environments and policies; and the creation of local community nutrition advisory councils to mobilize efforts to move intervention strategies forward. The project hypotheses are: 1) through participation in community and school food assessments and the development of community nutrition councils, school and community members will have increased awareness and knowledge of the health disparities related to lack of access to health-promoting foods; and 2) increased awareness and the development of community-driven strategies for environmental and policy change will in turn lead to improved nutrition environments that reduce risk factors for overweight and diabetes.