Food and Nutrition
Section Newsletter
Summer 2006

Message from the Chair

Message from the Chair

I’m happy to send you my first message as the new chair of the Food and Nutrition Section.  Unfortunately, we had a computer snag with the Winter Newsletter so this is the first message since the start of my term. The Section had a very productive year in 2005 that will, hopefully, be followed by equally impressive accomplishments in 2006.  Last year, under the leadership of Charlene Sanders, we:

Ø      Developed talking points upon the release of the 2005 Dietary Guidelines.  Dr. Yvonne Bronner, Section member and member of the Dietary Guidelines Expert Committee, gave two media interviews on behalf of APHA.

Ø      Surveyed APHA state affiliates regarding advocacy for healthy weight and other food and nutrition topics.

Ø      Developed a policy implementation strategy to promote and engage state affiliates in APHA policy awareness and advocacy activities.

Ø      Conducted a policy implementation strategy with state affiliates using Policy 2003-17, ‘Food marketing and Advertising Directed at Children and Adolescents: Implications for Overweight’ to model potential advocacy activities.  Section innovation in this area will serve as a model for other Sections in working with affiliates on policy implementation.

Ø      Authored article in The Nations Health on work with affiliates.

Ø      Sponsored policy statement, ‘Supporting the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health’.

Ø      Organized an exhibit booth for the APHA Annual Meeting to highlight the Section, Section activities, and food and nutrition materials.

Ø      Raised funds to support student monitor’s registration fees to the annual meeting.

Ø      Recommended 15 graduate and undergraduate students for GEICO-supported, one year APHA student memberships.

Ø      Developed obesity talking points to be used by APHA leadership in communicating with politicians, media and the general public.

Ø      Reviewed and updated the Section strategic plan.

Ø      Published three newsletters to keep membership informed of Section activities and food and nutrition related issues.

Ø      Recommended members for the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies committee that will review and make recommendations regarding appropriate nutritional standards for the availability, sale, content, and consumption of foods at school.  Dr. Mary Story will participate on this expert committee.

Ø      Planned program for Annual Meeting that includes 20 scientific sessions, four poster sessions, and a technology theater session. This is the first year that the Section has sponsored a technology session.

Ø       Developed a Section response to the WIC IOM report encouraging APHA to work with USDA to implement the recommendations in the report.

In 2006, we will build upon the Section’s previous work, as well as expand our emphases and outreach.

Our focus on child obesity will be strengthened as we develop concrete strategies to address this important issue.  One of our top 2006 priorities will be to explore whether the Food and Nutrition Section should expand to include Physical Activity, bridging a gap in our work toward stemming the obesity epidemic.  In the area of obesity prevention, collaboration is critical and currently there is no “home” for Physical Activity.  Susan Kayman has agreed to research this issue for us and develop a plan for future action.

The work of the Food Safety Committee is very vital and is bringing our Section into a new area of leadership.  This committee will continue to play a vigorous role in 2006 as we work to adopt a general resolution on food safety.

Section membership remains a priority area for 2006.  We will encourage each member to bring others, especially students into the Section.  Further, we plan to continue to highlight benefits of the Section and develop a formal mentoring program. This expansion of membership and a mentoring program should also help to diversify our membership in ways which will benefit the Section and our focus on food and nutrition policy. 

We will build on existing efforts to establish strong Section’s linkages with the affiliates.  As you know, under the leadership of Patti Risica, our Section conducted a survey of affiliate needs in the area of supporting healthy weights.  She found that many affiliates had an interest in programs and activities related to healthy weights and wanted additional support from the Section including fact sheets and other resources.  We can send information to affiliates, direct them to relevant information on our Web site, and work with them to link to existing state legislation.  In 2006 we will consider the development of a comprehensive plan for fuller communication with affiliates, advising them on activities they can do and supporting their efforts.

I look forward to working with you during this exciting year for our Section and for our field of food and nutrition.  Please continue your past efforts and work with us to increase our membership and our influence.  At this time I’d like to welcome all our new 2006 Board members: Marcia Thomas, Matthew Marsom, Lisa Sutherland, Sibylle Kranz and Gail Woodward-Lopez as well as the continuing members: Charlene Sanders, Bettiina Beech, Deirdra Chester, Barbara Laraia, Sarah Samuels, Mary Story, Carole Garner,  Joan Trendall, L. Beth Dixon, Katrina Holt, Eileen Parish, Sara Fein, Paul Cotton, Noel Chavez, Angela Odoms-Young, Sonya Jones, Geraldine Perry-Allen, Sue Foerster, Ruth Palombo and Lissa Ong.

We have a dynamite team - stay tuned!

Pat Crawford

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Food and Nutrition Section News

Section Liaison Program

Did you know that there are currently over 130 APHA student members in the Food and Nutrition Section?  Did you know that each APHA section has one or two student members that serve as section liaisons to the APHA Student Assembly?

The new section liaisons for the FN Section are Heather Hartline-Grafton, MPH, LDN, RD, and Krista Yoder.  They will communicate the needs and interests of all FN Section student members to APHA and the FN Section leadership.

Heather is a doctoral student in the Community Health Sciences Department of the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans.  Krista Yoder is a Senior Nutrition and Dietetics major at Messiah College in Harrisburg, Penn.

Food and Nutrition Section student members can e-mail Heather
(hhartlin@tulane.edu) or Krista (krista_yoder@yahoo.com) with APHA or
Section-related questions, concerns, and student opportunities.  All section
members are encouraged to e-mail the liaisons with student-related
opportunities and business.

To learn more about the Section Liaison Program visit
http://aphastudents.org/section_liaisons.php.

APHA 2005 Annual Meeting & Exposition: Philadelphia, Dec. 10-14, 2005

Thanks for supporting Food and Nutrition Section events at the 2005 Annual Meeting. To view photos, click on the link below:

Warning! Photos will take a while to download.

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APHA Governing Council Report

Beth Dixon, Anna Maria Siega-Riz and Joan Trendell represented the Food and Nutrition Section on the APHA Governing Council during the 2005 Annual Meeting held in Philadelphia. During the sessions, Governing Councilors heard many reports by the leadership and various committees and taskforces of the Association. In addition, new Association policies were adopted and there was an election of president-elect and three Executive Board members.

During the report of the chair of the Executive Committee, three priority areas for the Association were presented for adoption -- Access to Health Care, Eliminating Health Disparities and Public Health Infrastructure. As was discussed during Food and Nutrition Section conference calls earlier in the year, a motion to add Primary Prevention as an Association priority was made by Joan Trendell. Much discussion ensued from Councilors, much of which seemed to focus on what was meant by primary prevention and whether it was already represented in the Public Health Infrastructure priority. In the end, a revised motion adopted requiring the Board to discuss the addition of this priority and to come back to the Governing Council with a report.

There was an extensive report from the chair of the Taskforce on Association Improvement and Reorganization (TFAIR), with a number of motions coming from this taskforce that were adopted, including:

•Continuation of TFAIR with specific tasks identified through 2006.

•Governing Council will have at least two and as many as four meetings each year, with those other than the Annual Meeting being conducted by conference calls.

•A process to strengthen the relationship between APHA and Caucuses.

•Creation of a Forum, which will enable APHA members from across various units to work together on specific public health issues.

•Allowing membership in more that one section or special primary interest group.

•A process for providing assistance with sections with falling membership and the devolution of Sections not meeting membership levels as well as a process for the evolution of SPIGs to sections.

•A charge to TFAIR to discuss Caucus representation on Governing Council.

The theme for the 2007 Annual Meeting, to be held in Washington, D.C., generated much discussion. In the end “Politics, Policy and Public Health” was adopted, despite some concerns about the potential of APHA’s 501c3 status being jeopardized by appearing to be acting in the arena of partisan politics, given the timing and location of this Annual Meeting.

The adoption of policy statements, including several latebreakers, was completed. “Supporting the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health,” a latebreaker in 2004, was passed. In addition, “Reducing Nutrition-Related Disparities through Food Stamp Nutrition Education, Improved Participation in the Food Stamp Program and the 2007 Farm Bill” was passed as a late breaking, interim policy and will require passage in 2006 to make it permanent policy.  For more information on APHA policy statements, go to the member section at http://www.apha.org.

Election results were as follows:
President-elect: Deborah Klein Walker
Executive Board: Linda Landesman, Linda Rae Murray, and Ellen Shaffer

Items of new business that were adopted as motions:

•Implementation of the Executive Board-endorsed Call for a Review of APHA’s Principles for Commercial Support or Donations.

•Executive Board analysis of the feasibility and desirability of the creation of an advocacy arm of APHA.

•APHA prepare legally and financially for the possibility of being challenged as being involved in political activities (related to the 2007 Annual Meeting theme that was approved).

•For the future, no vote using the devices shall be legitimate unless the device numbers are displayed so that individuals voting know whether their vote was tabulated (this was in response to some issues with the devices during voting).

As always, serving on Governing Council is an interesting experience!! Thanks to retiring Councilor Anna Maria Siega-Riz for her two years of service in this role for the Food and Nutrition Section. Governing Councilors from the Section for 2006 are Beth Dixon, Katrina Holt and Joan Trendell.

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Affiliate News

New York Affiliate Builds from 2005 APHA Annual Meeting to Help NYC Develop Public Health Tool

The Session "Community Food Assessments: Tool for Public Health & Community Empowerment," presented by the Food & Nutrition Section at APHA’s December Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, provided excellent examples of how participatory community food assessments (CFAs) can empower communities to take action for their health. (For more information on CFAs, check this link:
http://www.foodsecurity.org/cfa_home.html).

Returning from that panel where I was moderator, our affiliate in NYC, Public Health Association of New York City (PHANYC), convened a Nutrition Working Group meeting in January, hosted by my co-affiliate liaison Beth Dixon at NYU. The Working Group is part of our affiliate’s broad public health outreach effort, “Agenda For a Healthy New York”. Our Working Group has proven an active participant in PHANYC’s public health leadership, having conducted a Forum and produced a report, “Nutrition & Physical Activity in New York City: Defining A Common Policy Agenda” in Spring 2005 to help educate candidates before city-wide elections this past fall.

At the January meeting, I reported to the group about my session and that a CFA was in the early planning stages in NYC under the leadership of the Bronx District Public Health Office. Yet, having attended the preliminary meeting in the Bronx, I observed that the interested groups there were largely unfamiliar with the participatory model for conducting CFAs, and no one there had been able to attend the session on CFAs at APHA in Philadelphia.

With this understanding, our Working Group became quite energized around planning an educational forum on participatory community food assessments to educate community-based groups across NYC. With the help of our Working Group members, and PHANYC Executive Director Amy Schwartz, plans came together for “Community Food Assessments 101: A Forum of The Agenda for a Healthy New York” on Monday, April 3 as part of National Public Health Week. The theme for this year’s week, Designing Healthy Communities, Raising Healthy Kids, seems a fitting home for our Forum designed to educate attendees on the power of CFAs as a tool to create community-wide change that engages community members in problem solving via sustainable solutions! It included presentations from the December APHA panel, as well as other, more local CFA success stories.

The goal of our Forum was to help educate NYC groups in the participatory CFA model, and we invited the collaboration of other local organizations who have an interest in this: the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, World Hunger Year, City Harvest and an emerging food systems group. Discussions are under way to explore mechanisms to enable such groups to, over time, provide technical assistance to neighborhood organizations who would like to conduct CFAs but need education and tools to do so!

"This is an excellent example of how our APHA Food & Nutrition section can be helpful at the affiliate level, linking new research to the members of our states and communities who need the resources, best practices, etc." observes Food & Nutrition Section Chair Elect, Patricia Risica, DrPH, RD, from Brown University. Patti has led a new effort within the Section to work more closely with affiliates. That vision has been widely embraced, and APHA is looking to see how other sections can be a conduit to better dissemination of innovation in public health to communities in need.

Our PHANYC Working Group expressed a high motivation to take on an educational and policy advocating role around CFAs in the city. This began with the Forum and will continue via other educational support of the Bronx effort, and, over time, PHANYC could help promote legislation in NYC to use the Bronx model in Community Board #1 (once piloted and tested) for replication of that CFA process at the Community Board Level in other parts of NYC (there are 59 Community Boards in NYC!). Watch this space in the next issue for an update on PHANYC and other affiliates' exciting work.

Lynn Fredericks
FamilyCook Productions
familycookprod1@mac.com

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Legislation, Advocacy and Policy News

National Health, Nutrition, and Physical Activity Monitoring Act, H.R. 2844 HIGXYZ45HIGZYXAs Public He