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

Abstract #117028

Eric S. Griffin and Danny Gerber. Urban Nutrition Initative, University of Pennsylvania Center for Community Partnerships, 133 South 36th Street, Suite 519, Philadelphia, PA 19104, 215-898-1600, egriffin@mail.med.upenn.edu

The Urban Nutrition Initiative (UNI) is a partnership that engages faculty and students from the university with public schools and community stakeholders in school-based efforts to improve community nutrition. For more than ten years UNI has engaged school students in a year-round community-problem solving curriculum that promotes nutrition knowledge, access to healthy foods and active lifestyles. This curriculum is integrated into core-subject areas such as math, language and science.

As UNI evolved, multiple community stakeholders provided input that expanded its scope to address a variety of community problems. Therefore, a complex set of priorities have guided the growth of UNI so as to function simultaneously as a program to improve not only youth nutritional status, but overall school performance, community environment and civic engagement.

Interventions to improve nutrition in a school-based setting are often assessed with a limited, linear evaluation framework. In contrast, the complex forces that have guided UNI's development over more than a decade require an assessment protocol capable of evaluating the impact - social, economical, psychological and political among others - of the multiple and interrelated program components. Designing such an integrated, multiple layered, qualitative and quantitative assessment plan requires an intimate knowledge of the project and its history, yet also an attitude of “detached commitment.” This paper presents the steps followed in constructing the assessment for UNI as a model for other long term complex interventions as well as identifying the proper process for executing such a plan without creating bias.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to (
• articulate how university community partnerships can support sustained efforts to improve community health and nutrition, (
• recognize complex strategies employed by the Urban Nutrition Initiative and (
• identify assessment criteria for evaluating a complex nutrition education program.

Keywords: School-Based Programs, Assessments

Related Web page: www.urbannutrition.org/

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation