States and school districts around the country are developing policies that set nutrition standards for competitive foods and beverages sold outside of the US Department of Agriculture's reimbursable school lunch program. However, few tools exist for monitoring the implementation of these new policies. The objective of this research was to develop a computerized assessment tool, the Food and Be...

In this article, we examine responsive feeding as a nutrition intervention, with an emphasis on the development and incorporation of responsive feeding into policies and programs over the last 2 decades and recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of responsive feeding interventions. A review of policy documents from international agencies and high-income countries reveals that responsi...

The results and conclusions of well design nutrition studies, using the appropriate methods to achieve the intended aims with the best validity and precision possible are of great value for nutritional, food and toxicological surveillance systems; also in the planning, follow-up and evaluation of nutrition and health policies and providing high value information for the formulation of recommend...

OBJECTIVE In the context of the global obesity epidemic, national nutrition policies have come under scrutiny. The present paper examines whose interests - industry or public health - are served by these policies and why. DESIGN Using an exemplary case study of submissions to an inquiry into obesity, the research compared the positions of industry and public health groups with that taken by g...

In a recent editorial in Biostatistics, Peng (2009) introduced a system for making data and computer code from papers in the journal publicly available so that other researchers can reproduce the statistical analyses in the paper. The editors explain in a short accompanying note (Diggle and Zeger, 2009) that ‘we wish to encourage the practice of making research published in the journal reproduc...

OBJECTIVE To develop, evaluate, and validate 2 nutrition environment assessment tools (surveys), for specific use in combating overweight on college/university campuses. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS Invitations to complete surveys were e-mailed to food service and health center directors at 47 universities, Winter 2008. Overall response rate was 48%. Responses from the 39 individuals who complete...

The research program proposal, CRP4, as the title implies, addresses the strategic system level objective in the CGIAR Strategic Research Framework; “to improve nutrition and health”. As the only CRP to address health and nutrition explicitly, it should add considerable value to the CRP portfolio, given mounting evidence that food supply and access to food are not enough to achieve favorable nu...

INTRODUCTION The child care environment has emerged as an ideal setting in which to implement policies that promote healthy body weight of children. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of a wellness policy and training program on the physical activity and nutrition environment in 24 child care centers in Georgia. METHODS We used the Environment and Policy Assessment and Observa...