Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #115264

Liz Schwarte, MPH, Maria Boyle, MS, RD, Lisa Craypo, MPH, Sarah Stone-Francisco, MPH, and Sarah Samuels, DrPH. Samuels & Associates, 663 13th Street, Oakland, CA 94612, 510-271-6799, liz@samuelsandassociates.com

In 2005 The California Endowment funded 6 communities in California to participate in the Building Communities for Healthy Eating and Physical Activity, a four-year initiative designed to reduce disparities in obesity/diabetes among children by improving food and physical activity environments for children. The collaborating agents of change in each community are a broadly representative community organization, a school district, and the local public health department. Collaborating entities will address the program objectives by working strategically to achieve change across five specific sectors at the local level - schools, after school programs, neighborhoods, media and advertising and health care. A strategic logic model was developed to create a unified mission-vision across sectors by identifying common targets and linked interventions. An evaluation framework was developed to assess process and impact outcomes and uses multiple qualitative and quantitative methodologies to describe the Initiative's accomplishments, challenges, lessons learned and best practices. The evaluation approach is based on an environmental framework that captures the effect of changing food and physical activity environments and is driven by several overarching core research questions: 1) Across sectors, how and to what extent did the place-based strategies utilized by the collaboratives impact the food, physical activity, built, and policy environments in the grantee communities? 2) How and to what extent did the Initiative impact individual attitudes, perceptions, knowledge and behaviors? 3) How well were the local collaboratives able to operationalize plans, utilize technical assistance, engage youth and their families, and link to local, state and national policy initiatives?

Learning Objectives: