Duration: 10/01/2011 to 09/30/2016

Administrative Advisor(s):

NIFA Reps:

Non-Technical Summary

Statement of Issues and Justification

While the importance of food to health and well-being is clear, the specific ways in which food systems contribute to individual and community health are not well understood. This is a complex issue, which requires improving food systems as well as changing mindsets and behaviors of individuals within the food system. The purpose of this project is to investigate these complex relationships, involving key stakeholders in analyzing and addressing problems and solutions. Our goal is to increase understanding of food and nutrition practices and systems, and to facilitate food-related institutional, community, family, and individual behavioral changes that can improve health and well-being.


In this project we take a broad view of health and well-being, moving beyond the framework of the absence of disease. We incorporate Buchanan's (2000) notion of well-being, which includes a holistic view of individual health and community well-being, as well as their intersection. Incorporating such a notion is important because global biophysical and socio-cultural systems, as well as community and family systems, impact health and well-being directly and also indirectly through their impact on food decision-making (Gillespie and Smith, 2008). For Buchanan, individual well-being is integral to community well-being, in the sense that institutions must function to facilitate health for individuals. Our work at the community level aligns with Allen's notion that food-system localization is a window and a pathway for addressing the environmental, social and economic issues in the food system that constrain and enable human health and safety (Allen, 2010).


Clearly, there are major health issues in the American food system, as the mounting reports regarding the prevalence of food-related conditions, diseases, and ill health indicate. Risk factors for chronic disease (such as diabetes, cancer, and heart disease) and poor health include obesity and food insecurity. Obesity rates among some segments of the US population continue to rise (Flegal et al., 2010), and nowhere have such rates begun to decline. Rates in 2007 ranged from 32% of adults in Mississippi to 18.7% in Colorado (Obesity Society, 2010). Obesity rates are disproportionate across ethnic groups but are positively related to poverty and sociocultural influences (Levi et al., 2010; Pleis et al 2008). Understanding why and how obesity rates are stabilizing among some groups while increasing in others is key to developing strategies for decreasing obesity across populations.


One link is the connection between obesity and food insecurity, which is increasing in the US. Nearly 15% of households over 50 million people were food insecure in 2008 (up from 11% in 2007), meaning that at times they did not have enough money for food. Food insecurity has been exacerbated in recent years due to the increased cost of food and fuel, inadequate food stamp benefits, unemployment, the recent spike in foreclosures and rent or mortgage costs, and the increased cost of living in general. A May 2008 national survey by Feeding America, the nations largest charitable hunger-relief organization, found that an average of 15 to 20% more people were forced to resort to emergency food aid in 2008 than in 2007. More than 80% of surveyed food banks indicated they were unable to meet demands without reducing the amount of food distributed per person served (Feeding America, 2008). Compounding the issue, U.S. Department of Agriculture bonus foods have declined by $200 million and local food donations were down nationally by about 9% during the same period (Feeding America, 2008).


Many of the food-related health problems in the US disproportionately affect children, women, ethnic minorities, and low-income people. For example, low-income and minority populations in the US have higher rates of food-related chronic illnesses such as obesity, heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes, and lower rates of physical activity compared to higher-income and non-Hispanic whites (Taylor et al., 2006, Kumanyika, 2008, Sankofa and Johnson-Taylor, 2007). For women, higher obesity rates tend to occur among population groups with the highest poverty rates and the least education (Drewnowski and Specter, 2004; Phipps et al., 2006). Furthermore, food insecurity is disproportionately experienced by poor, single-mother, Hispanic, and African American households (42%, 37%, 27%, and 26%, respectively) (Nord et al., 2009). And food insecurity is experienced significantly in the Native American populations as well (Pleis et al 2008). Vozoris and Tarasuk (2003) also found that low-income, food-insecure individuals had significantly higher odds of reporting poor or fair health, of having poor functional health, restricted activity and multiple chronic conditions, of suffering from major depression and distress, and of having poor social support than higher income individuals. Individuals in food-insufficient households were also more likely to report heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and food allergies (Vozoris and Tarasuk, 2003). Smith and Richards (2008) found that the majority of homeless youth in their sample had inadequate intakes of calcium, vitamin D, and potassium, and less than the Estimated Average Requirements (EAR) for vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, phosphorus, folate, and zinc. The many factors that influence dietary behaviors and subsequent health among low-income minorities are associated with inequalities in education and income, healthy food access, cultural norms, racism, psychology, and health care quality and access (Sankofa and Johnson-Taylor, 2007).


Addressing these problems requires that we understand more about the processes of institutional change, structural conditions, perceptions, and decision-making. As the obesity epidemic has come to dominate health care, prevention and treatment, and as food insecurity continues to increase, nutritionists are beginning to understand that we must move beyond the dominant public health paradigm of individual behavior change to include the contexts in which change for better or for worse occurs (Gillespie and Johnson-Askew, 2009, Larson et al., 2009, Wells and Olson, 2006, Gillespie and Gillespie, 2007, Flora and Gillespie 2009). The environment itself determines much of what individuals can draw from it. Community norms may dictate who has access to food assistance; civically engaged communities for example provide more food assistance and make food resources for the poor more easily accessible. Furthermore, consumer and producer attitudes and interests may conflict over some issues surrounding sustainability and health (Selfa et al., 2008). Engaging the food environment requires strategies that include planning by middle-class food procurers (McIntosh et al., forthcoming b) and the use of food stamps, stealing food, consuming food in retail stores rather than paying for it, scavenging and going without food so that other family members can eat (Richards and Smith, 2006).


We offer a new approach that builds on family and community assets and takes a systems perspective. New and community-engaged approaches to the conceptualization, study, and outreach and their integration are needed to address constraints to health and well-being including obesity, food insecurity, diabetes and other chronic diseases. The keys to understanding the rise of obesity and other maladies associated with over-nutrition lie, in part, in these communities, which are in turn shaped by larger social, economic, and institutional structures (Allen, 2004). A systems approach to food in local communities and families, one that takes into account the social, economic and cultural aspects of food, is required to unravel the mysteries of food-related problems in multiple dimensions.


Moving from medical and educational models of intervention, this approach focuses on how changes in the social and physical environment enhance the ability of families and individuals to make healthy choices (Flora and Gillespie, 2009). Food decision-making processes, acquisition, transformation, presentation, consumption and disposal are also social acts with biophysical implications for children, their families, and communities (Gillespie and Gillespie, 2007). Thus, we will try to unpack how social and biophysical systems interact to define individuals' food choices, impact their food decision-making processes, and change their way of thinking about food, eating, health, well-being, and engagement in their community food system decision-making (Gillespie and Smith, 2008, Gillespie and Gillespie, 2007). For children, these include family, school, and community food systems (Gillespie and Smith, 2008).

The interactions within and between family and community food decision-making systems affect both the health and well-being of children and their families, as well as the sustainability of community food systems (Gillespie and Johnson-Askew, 2009). Family food and eating routines are enabled or constrained by the availability and accessibility of healthy eating alternatives in their community food system. At the same time, families' appreciation of nourishing foods grown sustainably can shape the community food system. Thus, the food decision-making systems of families and communities interact at multiple levels. These interactions impact the appreciation, availability, and accessibility (AAA) of foods that promote family and community health and well-being by improving eating practices and food choices and increasing demand for sustainably produced foods (Gillespie, unpublished manuscript). The AAA frame expands the supply-demand paradigm to take into account that eaters are more than just consumers in the market place or recipients of government or private food assistance, but can effectively engage in community food decision-making for systems change in their environment.


Each person has a connection to the wider food environment that is both the result of their individual circumstances (e.g., where they go to school, work, shop on their own, hang out with friends) and as a family member. In addition each has a social network that, because they are members of the same family, will overlap to a certain extent. In the case of children, peers, grandparents, teachers, and others represent potential influences on their choice of foods and perhaps the amounts they consume. Similarly, parents will have neighbors, co-workers, friends and fellow association members that may influence food intake. Researchers have found that network characteristics influence network members' behaviors. At least two studies have found that individuals whose networks consist of overweight individuals tend to be overweight themselves (Christakis and Fowler, 2007; Valente et al., 2009). This may be the result of network members eating and exercise activities or because overweight individuals gravitate towards persons like themselves.


Family members may bring home with them food preferences developed as members of their differing social networks. Family members may also bring pre-prepared food home with them, which is either consumed by the family member who brought it or shared with others. Our understanding of the impacts of convenience foods, fast food, and groceries on the food intake of family members is incomplete, and must include Americans from all walks of life, the poor and the well-to-do. Understanding the food environment requires strategies that include planning by middle-class food procurers (McIntosh et al. forthcoming a, McIntosh et al. forthcoming b, Mancino et al., 2010), as well as strategies used by the poor to obtain food, including the use of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDIRP), stealing food, consuming food in stores without paying for it, dumpster diving, using social networks, and going without food so that other family members can eat (Richards and Smith, 2006). Research by Smith and Morton (2009) shows that community infrastructure, along with social, cultural, personal, and household factors all influence consumption patterns. In addition, family environments include their food decision-making structure, parental work constraints, and family traditions or rituals (particularly dinner rituals) (Gillespie, 2010, McIntosh et al., forthcoming a, McIntosh et al. forthcoming b). Our proposed research will examine what people are actually eating and how they influence or are influenced into eating that food.


We approach these issues from a food systems perspective, which requires the identification of the key actors in the system and their interrelationships. One method we will use for mapping key actors and their relationships is the tool developed by Gillespie and colleagues (Gillespie et. al., 2010 SNE; familyfood.human.cornell.edu). These actors include but are not limited to consumers (both individuals and groups such as families or grade school children), educators, change agencies, retail food outlets, food wholesalers, schools and school districts, and alternative options such as community supported agriculture, farmers markets, and local food assistance programs such as food banks and pantries. Issues of availability and access to food, particularly healthy alternatives, remain for both families and schools as they cope with financial constraints and family member and school childrens preferences.


Innovative practices for enhancing health and well-being and building sustainable food systems are blossoming in urban neighborhoods and rural communities. For example, schools have begun to make healthy changes in their breakfast and lunch offerings and their food environments. An example of this are the schools that participate in the California Endowments Healthy Eating, Active Communities program, which have made changes in vending machine offerings and physical education programs, and have influenced stores in the area surrounding the schools to offer healthier foods (Samuels et al., 2010). Communities are exploring options such as taxing sugared drinks (New York) and getting farmers markets to accept food stamps (Los Angeles). At the same time there is a surge of interest in community gardening, community supported agriculture, and farmers markets. It is as yet unclear whether these efforts will reverse these negative trends in fruit and vegetable consumption and obesity prevalence. Research to date shows that some changes in the food system can lead to better health. For example, neighborhood residents who have better access to supermarkets and limited access to convenience stores tend to have healthier diets and lower levels of obesity. Morland and Evenson (2009) measured the association between the presence of food establishments and obesity among adults living in the southern region of the United States and found the prevalence of obesity was lower in areas that had supermarkets and higher in area with small grocery stores or fast food restaurants (Morland and Evenson 2009).


We will gather data on how individuals and families make food-purchase, food-preparation, and food-consumption decisions. We will study the contribution of various family members to both food acquisition and food preparation, and how eating together influences the intake or lack thereof of particular foods. In addition, we will examine how community food infrastructure affects food availability and access through the local retail stores, gardens, farmers' markets, and food-assistance programs. Associations will be examined among food choice, access, and availability and outcomes of health and well-being. Also, data on the availability of healthy and unhealthy food choices will be collected. We will then connect these data on family decisions and food availability to outcomes of health and well-being. We will also study other linkages in the food system, including connections between the retail food sector and food assistance programs in communities. Furthermore, we are working to document food security, increasing understanding of the ways in which food-system innovations (such as CSAs) contribute to health and well-being, and are engaged with community-based efforts to change the food system in ways that support health and well-being (such as those working with school food programs). Project members will explore ways to improve family and community food decisions and increase healthy food consumption in communities through schools, households, community gardens/farmers' markets, tribal programs, and to increase access to healthy foods in stores in an effort to improve the health and well-being of community residents.


This project will examine family, community, and institutional dynamics to better understand how the food system influences individual and population health and well-being. This includes investigating the interaction between food consumption by families and how family food selections are influenced by interactions family members have with one another and with their food environments. In this project we will work to increase understanding of problems and solutions in food-related health and well-being. We will engage with the underserved as well as community stakeholders and decision makers through Collaborative Engaged Research Methodology (Gillespie, 2010), and explore other means for creating community access to research. While university-based research, education, and outreach programs have not always served or been accountable to people of color and underserved populations (Slocum, 2006), in this project we will develop an inclusive, community-oriented, participatory approach. This will require a focused effort to work with groups that have historically had less ability to access and benefit from university programs than have traditional agricultural clients.


University engagement with the public and its various communities is mutually beneficial and can both improve the quality of research as well as lead to enhanced problem-solving and ultimately transformative action. It can advance the interests of specific external partners and the general public while also advancing and enhancing the interests and work of academia (Kellogg Commission, 1999). Community-based research goes beyond public scholarship in that it directly involves the public in developing the research questions and treats them as equals in the research process (Gillespie, 2009). In addition, community projects are often isolated and idiosyncratic rather than integrated into cumulative learning and policy change to lead to sustainable system changes for increased well-being (Allen and Guthman, 2006); our goal is to enhance learning and changes across regions and sectors of the food system.


Our interdisciplinary research team is well positioned for this multi-state effort of conceptual and empirical engagement with the complex issues of food systems, health, and well-being. The team has extensive experience in working at multiple levels and with a range of stakeholders to integrate research with education and outreach. Since our project group is composed of members from states in many areas of the country, we will be able learn from and engage with people with different historical experiences and contemporary conditions. This diversity and range will greatly increase the scope of action, and the knowledge base for future work. Moreover, multiple disciplines (including economics, nutrition, sociology, and geography) are represented on the project team, ensuring that problems and solutions will be addressed from a range of perspectives and methodologies.

Related, Current and Previous Work

Our previous work is associated with NC-1001 and NC-1033 and we will focus on our accomplishments associated with these two regional projects. It is important to mention here that our future work has continuity with our past efforts in the sense that we continue our interest in families, communities, local food and health. Furthermore our past work has taken an implicit food systems approach to these issues; our proposed work will treat local food systems more explicitly. Previous work has focused on food deserts and other access issues and while these remain germane, we will more explicitly examine how families make food decisions in order to deal with issues of access. In addition, our earlier approach emphasized structural barriers to food, including local food, and we will attempt to tie these barriers to food decision making by both families and the retail and food assistance sectors of the local food system.


Our research over the past 5 years has devoted considerable attention to food deserts and food insecurity, particularly in rural areas, examining ways in which rural residents cope with food availability issues (Henderickson et al., 2006; Smith and Morton, 2009). Others have looked at the nature of available foods in rural convenience and grocery stores (Creel et al., 2008; Bustillos et al., 2009). Other members have looked at efforts by communities, school systems, and universities to localize their food systems. We now know more about the availability and cost of healthy food choices in rural areas. Two of the participating states have conducted focus group research in order to determine consumers' perceptions of and access to local food; several other participating states will collect similar data in the future as well as study future consumption intentions of self-described locavores. Some project members have looked at family food decision-making (Gillespie and Johnson-Askew, 2009), while other research by project members has shed some light on how parents influence childrens eating habits and eating outcomes. This research has shown that both parents' work experiences influence children's intake of energy from fats and their risk of obesity; in addition, this research shows that fathers use of fast food has a greater influence on children's intake of this food than mothers do (McIntosh et al. 2006; McIntosh et al., forthcoming a). Related to this work are studies conducted by project members that have pinpointed social influences on intentions to change behavior in order to better manage diabetes.


In 2009 the NC1033 research group pooled knowledge to develop a book proposal for a handbook on Food Systems and Health: Conditions and Solutions. Fourteen NC1033 members and their colleagues intended to contribute; an editorial plan was created, abstracts written for chapters, and a prospectus developed. The group also submitted the prospectus to the Journal of Agriculture and Human Values, Springer Publishing, whose editor suggested it would be several years before publication and would contain less material than the group had proposed. The group discovered a special journal issue on food systems and nutrition had already been published in the Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition. Many of the articles proposed for the book are being integrated into other avenues of publication for timely outreach.


During the 2006 to 2010 period project members have amassed $6 million through 7 grants. Project members produced 41 journal articles, 14 book chapters, and one book, plus 4 technical reports. In addition, members made 18 conference presentations.


Our current and proposed work differs significantly from current USDA Regional Projects. Projects that have an ephemeral relation to ours include: NC-1028 Promoting Healthful Eating to Prevent Excessive Weight Gain. This project is more narrowly focused on college students and obesity and interventions that change college student's eating and exercise patterns. In addition, NE-1012, which recently concluded, overlapped somewhat with NC-1033, but NE-1012 focused largely on agriculture, not families, the retail food sector, or the food assistance sector.


Individual Project Member Accomplishments


Dr. Patricia Allen is the Director of the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on the political, environmental, and social issues and movements in conventional and alternative agrifood systems; food security; and alternative modes of food distribution, consumption and public health, including farm to school. Allen is currently looking at local food campaigns and their efficacy in reaching disadvantaged communities with Dr. Clare Hinrichs (Penn State University). Allen has a National Science Foundation grant with Dr. Carolyn Sachs (Penn State University) examining how gender, class, race-ethnicity and citizenship interact in peoples experiences of inequality and practices that reproduce these inequalities within food systems. Allen is interested in urban agriculture as a vehicle to improve nutrition and access to healthy food in underserved communities and healthy school food initiatives.


During the period 2008-2009, Allen was engaged in local and alternative food system research and was invited to published chapters in two edited books. She received a National Science Foundation NSF Grant with Carolyn Sachs of Penn State to research gender and race inequities in food system labor and began interviews of men and women in food system jobs, including questions about their access to healthy food.


From 2009-2010, Dr. Allen was invited to submit an article, Realizing Justice in Local Food Systems, which was published in the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 3 (2): 295-308. The article addressed food system localization and its constraints within frameworks of economy, demography, geography and democracy. During this period she continued her research in food system localization with Clare Hinrichs of Penn State and completed individual and dialogic interviews on her NSF project on reproductions of inequities in food labor. She invited Jan Poppendiek, author of Free for All: Fixing School Food in America (2010, University of California Press), to California and initiated the Centers involvement in community-based dialogues and research to improve school food from the perspectives of farm to school and institutional sourcing of healthy food.


Christopher Edmonds serves as PI on a research project being undertaken by a team at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, which is assembling existing food consumption and expenditure surveys conducted in Hawaii and Guam and combining these data with information on food prices gathered from major retail outlets. This will help address a serious gap in the information available on food consumption in Hawaii, as the previous food consumption and expenditure survey data available for Hawaii dates from 1977 and there are no plans by federal agencies to conduct another round. The research is assessing the economic barriers to greater use of organic and/or locally produced farm produce within a nutritionally adequate minimum cost local diet, and improving understanding of grocery supply chains and pricing structures with the aim of identifying way to encourage local production and consumption of such produce. The research also explores the impact of diet-related diseases on dietary costs in order to incorporate special dietary foods such as low sodium, low cholesterol, and low sugar options. Research also investigates relationships between food purchase patterns, geographical location, and health outcomes such as BMI. The Guam/Hawaii study analyzes the diets and food purchases of Hawaii families (particularly for sub-populations at high risk of diet-related diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease and low income families struggling with limited food budgets) in relation to age- and gender-specific dietary standards, including Dietary Reference Intakes for nutrients and adherence to food pyramid recommendations. A principal goal is to develop an updated minimum-cost nutritionally adequate diet model and a searchable internet database compiling information on food consumption patterns in Hawaii, a simplified menu analysis/planning software, and related extension materials. This will gather the most recent data on consumer purchases from retail food outlets and time-cost of meal preparation across Hawaii, along with sets of recipes consistent with food preferences of consumers in the state.


Ardyth Gillespie (Cornell University) co-chaired an interdisciplinary scientific meeting at the National Institutes of Health in the spring of 2008 around the topic of Decision Making in Eating Behavior: Interacting Perspectives from Individual, Family and Environment. Gillespies plenary presentation, Family Food Decision-Making: An Ecosystems Perspective, described the biophysical and social systems that interact with the family food decision-making systems to influence health and well-being. Selected presenters from this conference prepared papers for a special issue of Annuals of Behavioral Medicine (2009, Volume 38) for which she was co-editor. In her own paper on Changing Family Food and Eating Practices, co-authored by Dr. Johnson-Askew, Dr. Gillespie laid out the idea that family food and eating practices are dynamic and change with or without purposive intervention. She presented a family food decision-making system framework for guiding Collaborative Engaged Research to further understanding about the process of changing family food and eating routines and decision-making processes (Gillespie and Johnson-Askew, 2009). This paper also presented seven family food decision-making propositions that emerged from the integration of five sets of ethnographic interviews with parents with diverse family forms living in multiple community contexts, and interviews with change agents who worked with families.


Also, in 2008, Dr. Gillespie was invited to present one of three empirical papers, Family Food Decision-making and Obesity, at the National Institutes for Health workshop on Feeding Families: Bridging Social Sciences and Social Epidemiology Approaches to Obesity Research. She was also a keynote speaker at the national meeting of the 1890 colleges on the same topic. With Laura Smith (Cornell), Dr. Gillespie described the family food decision-making system as moderating and mediating the impact of community food systems on childrens health and well-being (Gillespie and Smith, 2008). Cornelia Flora (Iowa State) and Dr. Gillespie applied their community capitals and family food decision-making research to address childhood obesity. These presentations and journal articles built upon previous research in family food decision-making (Gillespie and Gillespie, 2007) and Collaborative Engaged Research (Gillespie and Gillespie, 2006).


Gillespies current work builds upon and expands Family Food Decision-making research and Collaborative Engaged Research Methodology through interdisciplinary and university-community collaborations. Current projects include:
-Co-PI for Cornell interdisciplinary Sustainable Food Systems Research Team (funded by Cornell Center for Sustainable Future);
-Lead investigator for project to study access and appreciation of local healthy food in Tompkins County NY;
-Co-PI for a project funded by the Leopold Center for Connecting Family, Community, and Health from a Food System Perspective with K. Greder and C. Flora from ISU and the Cass County Cultivators coalition in SW IA.
-PI for CER on strategies and models for Building Effective Food System and Health partnerships within communities to improve sustainability of the local food system, health, and well-being.
-PI for Family and Community Food Decision-making project, Cornell funded component of NC-1033.
-Studying family food decision-making roles and responsibilities in a cross-cultural study with undergraduate students and also changes through the lifecourse.
-Consulting on research and evaluation for community-initiated projects in schools and with families.
-PI for multi-state, interdisciplinary, university and community partnership proposal for Advancing Food Security and Viable Local Economies by Building Food-secure Family and Community Systems.


With collaborators, Dr. Gillespie has developed methods and tools for Collaborative Engaged Research (familyfood.human.cornell.edu) and presented CER principles and strategies at the NIH conference on Improving Health WITH Communities: The Role of Community Engagement in Clinical and Translational Research, 2009 and for the conference on Enhancing Communication for Cross-disciplinary research, 2010. CER methodology has guided the development and pilot testing of successful cooking workshops for family-child pairs through which new insights emerged about family food decision making dynamics (roles, communication, power relationships)


Raymond Jussame (Washington State University) reports that the foundational goal of the project in Washington State is to investigate the linkages between local social structures, community participation, agri-food structures and community health. Research based on primary data collected in four counties verified that local social capital in the form of direct social network connections between consumers and producers plays a significant role in reinvigorating local agricultural systems. However, a separate research project in a remote, rural area of the State noted that low-income consumers access to alternative agri-food system networks is limited, in part because of the difficulties that food pantries and other local institutions that serve low-income consumers have in accessing local foods. Currently, a state-wide consumer study is being conducted to determine the extent to which consumers in different regions access local foods and whether consumers who are more likely to access local foods are also more likely to report that they are in good health and more likely to be involved in local community organizations. Preliminary results from that research will be released early in 2011.


William Alex McIntosh (Texas A&M University) has continued as a co-PI on the Resolving the Social Factors Influencing Variable Compliance and Risk Communication in Foreign Animal Disease Defense Programs project for USDA- CSREES. This project is still in the data analysis phase, but outreach efforts will begin during the spring of 2011 with a conference with government officials and producer group representatives in order to plan information dissemination programs. He is also co-PI on the School-Based Obesity Project, which is part of a center grant from the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIH). In addition, he has continued analyzing data from the Parental Time, Income, Role Strain, and Childrens Diet and Nutrition project (funded by USDA). This has resulted in 4 in print or forthcoming publications. The focus of this work has been on parents time use and behavioral and nutritional outcomes in children. Results include: 1) the more time that mothers spend with their children, the less fat in those childrens diet and the less likely they are obese; 2) the more time that fathers spend with their older children, the more likely those childrens diets contain more fat and the more likely they are obese; 3) the more caring but controlling both mothers and fathers are, the less likely their children are obese; 4) the more time that fathers spend at fast food restaurants, the more time their children spend at such establishments. He continues to write papers from the USDA-funded The Moral Economy of Antimicrobials in Animal Agriculture: Advancing Policy and Practice in an Era of Antimicrobial Resistance, from which two papers have been published and three others are under review. Over the last several months he has participated in the writing of proposals for the USDA-AFRI and Peoples Garden initiatives. The AFRI project, Using Family Focused Garden, Nutrition, and Physical Activity Programs to Reduce Childhood Obesity, was just funded and will begin February 1, 2011. He is a co-PI on this project and will be responsible for leading the Research and Evaluation Team.


Gerad Middendorf's (Kansas State University) research is in the sociology of agriculture and food and rural/environmental studies. He and colleagues recently published The Fight Over Food, an edited book that examines efforts to affect change in the food system (Penn State Press, 2008). (Partially supported through multistate --NE1012). Other recent work includes studies of information needs of organic growers/retailers, of agrarian landscape transition in Kansas, and of biofuels development in the Midwest. Regarding outreach, a recent project (SARE-funded) intended to build capacity in Iowa and Kansas to engage Latinos in their local food systems. Multicultural training sessions and experiential learning provided participants (professional educators, technical service providers in Extension, the NRCS, and other agencies) with increased awareness of Latino culture and community. Participants improved their skills in engaging Latino audiences, identifying local markets and sustaining support programs for Latino farm families.


Karen Chapman-Novakofskis (University of Illinois) research has focused on behavior theory and nutrition education impact analysis, especially in the area of diabetes and osteoporosis. Behavior change is essential for diabetes management, especially for meal management and exercise. Early work found that intentions were strongly related to subjective norm, attitudes and perceived control relative to diet in elderly men with diabetes (Chapman-Novakofski et al., 1995). In a community-based intervention, we found positive effects on stages of change and social cognitive behavior constructs, with enhanced knowledge, although still poor acquisition of declarative knowledge areas (Chapman-Novakofski et al., 2004; Spengelmeyer et al., 2008). Online learning enhanced knowledge acquisition and resulted in increased voluntary re-testing to achieve higher knowledge scores (Herrejon et al., 2009). Preliminary work supports this outcome in Hispanic audiences as well (Porter et al., 2009). Recent work with middle schoolers found repeat web visits and test taking outside of intervention time and enhanced outcomes with interactive online modules targeting healthy eating and exercise to prevent diabetes-linked behaviors (Castelli et al., 2010).


Stephany Parkers (Oklahoma State University) research focuses on issues related to sociocultural attitudes, opportunities, access and activities to improve heath and nutrition in Native American populations, particularly in the Oklahoma Chicksaw Nation. She has researched the efficacy of services, food assistance programs, gardening projects, and senior services for the population in addition to studying coping strategies, food choices and physical activity in the population.


Sandy Rikoons (University of Missouri) research focuses on issues related to food pantries and on means to assess trends in food insecurity and the performance of public and private programs. Food pantry work began five years ago with a survey of 1300 pantry client households (Foulkes et al., 2006). In 2010 his research team at the Interdisciplinary Center for Food Security received a major USDA AFRI grant to continue research with food pantry households and to undertake pilot efforts to improve the nutritional quality of distributed foods. Pantry interventions emphasize a food systems model, including strategies that target food availability, access and distribution, and consumption. Food insecurity and program assessment work is most evident in the Missouri Hunger Atlas, an assessment of 25 county-level variables related to food insecurity and mitigation programs. This is the most comprehensive state-level tool in the US and is presently begin used as a model for development of a National Hunger Atlas.


Dr. Chery Smith is an associate professor in the Department of Food, Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota. She is interested in how environment, age, socioeconomic status, and food insecurity influence the nutritional status, dietary behavior, and health of selected populations and is particularly interested in the hunger-obesity paradox in the US. In previous research she investigated: access to food resources by low-income families, assessed dietary behavior, evaluated coping mechanisms used by children and their mothers to ward off hunger, investigated the hunger-obesity paradox, the impact of community infrastructure on food access, shopping and food choice behaviors, and the environmental influence on dietary intake and weight status among low-income mothers and their children (Damman et al., forthcoming; Richards and Smith, 2010; Damman and Smith, 2009; 2010; Franzen et al., 2010; Smith et al., 2010; Franzen and Smith, 2009a,b; Smith and Morton, 2009; Eikenberry and Smith, 2005; Morton and Smith, 2008; Henderickson et al., 2006). Dr. Smith teamed with Dr. Lois Morton to conduct a two-state project to investigate rural food deserts (Morton and Smith, 2008; Hendrickson at al., 2006; Richards and Smith, 2006). Dr. Smith plans to continue her work in the areas of food insecurity, obesity, and food environments.

Objectives

1. To identify, assess, and analyze key determinants of health and well-being within the context of food systems.
   
2. To identify, assess, and analyze individual, collective, and institutional strategies that address constraints and opportunities to achieving optimal health and well-being.
   
3. To work with communities of interest to develop and test interventions to enhance health and well-being.
   

Methods

Objectives 1 and 2: Initial efforts for meeting these objectives will focus on family decision making and the food system in various community contexts, with an emphasis on the interrelationships between families and community food systems and the implications of these for health. Using focus groups and surveys of local populations, data will be obtained on values, attitudes, norms, priorities, knowledge and behaviors of families that shape how they make decisions about food and eating practices. One of the survey instruments, which will be used to assess family food decision-making processes and constraints, has been pretested in two states. In assessing these factors, project members will measure the degree to which family member health, including obesity and food safety, is a factor in decision-making, but will also take into account other issues such as cost, convenience, cultural and family preferences. The project will draw upon perspectives and research from consumer research on how families make purchasing decisions (Szybillo and Sosanie, 1977), in particular drawing upon the so-called process-oriented model (Payton et al., 2004). Several project members take a similar perspective in their current research on family decision-making when it comes to food choices. Work on Objective 1 should be completed by November 2012. Our long-term goal is to improve community health and well-being. Achieving this goal will require input from communities themselves using participatory methods such as Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Collaborative Engaged Research (CER). Specific methods to increase participation will include dialogue, appreciative inquiry, and positive deviance. Positive deviance, for example, includes uncommon practices that confer advantage to the people that engage in that practice compared with the rest of the community. Such behaviors are likely to be affordable, acceptable, and sustainable because they are already practiced by at-risk culture, they do not conflict with the local culture, and they work (Marsh et al., 2004, p.1178). Members of this project have already begun the task of involving local populations by teaching youth how to assess their local food environment in terms of its characteristics as well as its fairness (Nault et al., 2010). We will focus on specific geographic communities, as well as specific populations and community food sources within those communities. As Freudenburg (2006) has observed, problems are not distributed equally across populations. Instead, the problems befall residents in a disproportional manner while at the same time this disproportionality may be invisible to others (distraction). This project takes advantage of the multi-state model, first by collecting data from communities in Northeastern, Midwestern, Southwestern, and West coast states that will enable comparisons about similarities and differences in values, attitudes, norms, priorities, knowledge, and food behaviors in these important geographical areas. Secondly, project members will study regional differences in access to local foods using interviews of pantry and FDPIR directors. These programs designed to alleviate food insecurity will be assessed in terms of their performance. This will be completed by November 2013. Assessments of accessibility and availability will include determinations of consumer, retail food outlets, and food pantry locations, data about which will be examined using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Several project members have engaged in not only the mapping of food sources in relation to potential customers but also have determined the types and prices of available foods in those locations. Plans are underway, with the assistance of local public health officials, to connect these findings to disease rates in these foodsheds, using surveys of local populations. Similar focus group and survey work will be done with members that represent key components of the local food systems that serve as the context, constraints, and possibilities for these families as they make decisions. At the same time, as work by Deutsch (2010) and others note, the retail food system is not fully autonomous from its customers. The high mortality rate of restaurants provides strong evidence for this. Parsa et al. (2005) found that 59% of newly formed restaurants failed within three years of opening; interviews of failed restaurateurs found that their knowledge, attitudes, poor quality control, and low perceived value by customers were viewed as reasons for their failure. Our research focus will involve interviews of local restaurateurs to determine their perceptions of customers, particularly those who consumed their food as families, what they looked for in the foods available on restaurant menus as well as other aspects of their establishment that may have influenced customer choices and willingness to return. This work should be completed by November 2012. Retail food suppliers make decisions that limit access to healthy food in relation to the distance they are from particular neighborhoods, and/or price of the goods they sell, in addition to the particular foods they choose to sell. Retail chains have long used gravity models, but chains such as Wegmans have added income level and ethnic mix to the data used to decide where to locate new stores; Kroger now employs demographic modeling (e.g., neighborhood growth) plus lifestyle segmentation data to make decisions (McTaggert, 2007). Some stores have also experimented with health indices to determine the health of customers in potential areas for growth, apparently with marketing specific foods to potential with heart disease or diabetes. Convenience stores, because of competition from non-traditional venues such as drug stores, makes product decisions often reactively by mimicking the product stocking of their competitors, rather than on demand expressed through customer purchases (Crawshaw, 2008). However, Embrey (2005) claims that convenience stores believe that stocking those items working mothers look for (e.g., convenience; additional services such as ATM machines) is the key to higher sales. Again, we will collect data from food retail store managers relative to decisions made regarding foods they stock and their pricing schemes. Because food shoppers and others interact with those running the food system, it is important to understand the nature of those interactions and how they affect food decisions of both families and food providers. Deutsch's (2010) historical data on the interaction between customers and store managers demonstrate the importance of gender, race/ethnicity, and class in these interactions. Helgesen and Nesser (2010), for example, report significant differences in satisfaction with grocery stores, based on prices, store location, product quality, and satisfaction with both fruit and bakery selections. More recently, Master (2005) reports that overweight customers receive less friendly contact by convenience store clerks, leading to less time and money spent in those stores. Based on formative data collected in the first two years of the project we will construct data collection instruments to obtain data on these interactions and their perceived impacts on store policies and customers responses. We will draw on the methodological approach of Netemeyer et al. (2010), including the questionnaire these researchers employed. Others like Verbeke (2006) observe the importance of trust. The homeless are often forgotten, as are the working poor, in discussions of the food insecure (Berner, 2008). We will attempt to capture these forgotten populations, contrasting them with the more traditional food assistance recipients. Similar to our work on family decision-making, we will take a comparative perspective in order to determine similarities and differences in these populations and the food insecurity issues they face. Richards and Smith (2006) found that in order to take advantage of emergency foods, homeless recipients had to develop particular strategies, including cooking, in order to use the foods available to them. Other studies indicate that food pantries do a poor job of providing information about preparing low-cost, easy-to-prepare, and quick meals (Wood et al., 2007). Poppendiek (1998) found that recipients of emergency food pointed to flaws in the system, which included insufficient amounts of food, inadequate nutrition, instability of resources, access difficulties, inefficiency and indignities. In addition, in order to get at how family food decisions affect health issues, some project members will collect data on dietary intake while others will collect body composition data (e.g., BMI). Particular efforts will be made to insure the low-income and food-insecure families will be captured in these endeavors. Consumers of restaurant meals, for example, have claimed that when restaurants make calorie information available, they are more likely to take it into account when ordering food items (Dumanovsky et al., 2010). We will include in these queries what those in charge of food purchases look for when making food choices (e.g., in terms of family member preferences; in terms of the availability of foods and their prices; perceptions of the healthfulness of available foods). During the first two years of the project, project members will focus on food environments of local areas to determine the proportion of available foods that are energy-dense. This effort will involve studying the geographical location of food outlets, including food banks, as well as the food products those outlets make available. Several project members will collaborate in the use of secondary data to link meal planning, meal scheduling, and children's intake of specific foods (e.g., sweetened cereals; sweetened drinks) and well as specific nutrients. Sample sizes of the project-initiated survey research efforts will depend on the population size of the communities selected, but an effort will be made to stratify these samples in order to be able to compare low-income and female-headed households with middle/upper-income and dual-headed households and compare Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native American and non-Hispanic White families. Objective 3: We will work with communities of interest to develop and test interventions to enhance health and well-being through participatory research methods. Both Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Collaborative Engaged Research (CER) methodologies, in particular, integrate research for generating scholarly knowledge into community-led change programs that work with rather than on people to improve as well as study systems that influence their health and well-being. Members of the project who have used either PAR or CER methods in their past work will work towards integrating into a single, coherent methodology. We describe in the next several paragraphs these two methods and how they have been used in food-related research. We will use CER methods to generate grounded theory with community stakeholders (Gillespie and Gillespie, 2006) to add to our fundamental understanding of food decision-making systems (objective 1), to identify, assess, and analyze strategies for positive change (objective 2), and to develop and evaluate interventions (objective 3). Methods currently being used by project members include Appreciative Inquiry, Deliberative Dialogue. One CER tool assists food decision makers in mapping their food system actors and examining their working relationships. Another tool poses questions for food system decision makers to help them reflect on their food and eating routines, decision making processes, and the alignment of these practices with their family goals and values. For example, CER has been used to integrate research and program development and evaluation for the NY cooperative extension parent-child workshops, Cooking Together for Family Meals. Through Collaborative Engaged Research we are shifting the research paradigm for community decision-making towards transdisciplinary approaches for collaboration among scholars and community stakeholders (Gillespie, 2010). Collaborative Engaged Research helps us move toward true transdisciplinary collaborations in which transdisciplinary problems are uniquely formulated and cannot be captured within existing disciplinary domains. Collaborators accept and adopt epistemological perspectives unique to the collaborative effort and distinct from those of any of the cooperating disciplines (Eigenbrode, O'Rourke et al. 2007). Additionally, CER engages community decision-makers and food system stakeholders, community decision-makers, and opinion leaders with university researchers, educators, and students to set research agendas and discover and test grounded theory as they build community capacity to enhance health and well-being through systems change. At the same time we seek to encourage people to engage in their own change through shared responsibility. Collaborative Engaged Research methods are asset-based, building on community resources and strengths of individuals and families. These university community teams engage in co-learning and co-creating, respecting each other's values and working toward a better future for all involved. Project members will develop and disseminate information to assist local food pantries, FDPIR stores, participants in community gardens, and families to obtain more nutrient-dense and less energy-dense foods. The overall approach will be to enlist the very people in need of assistance in designing and testing the effectiveness of potential interventions using methods from participatory action research (PAR) to engage local stakeholders. This approach has been successfully used by nutrition researchers in Canada in the study of decline in traditional foodways among indigenous peoples (Chan and Kuhnlein, 2003; Gittelsohn et al., 2010); and by researchers working with the Los Angeles Unified School District, to study obesity-related food policies with students and school officials (Patel et al., 2009). Some project members will work with ethnic minority communities to engage them in their local food systems, while assisting local professionals in engaging Latino audiences, identifying local markets, and sustaining support programs for Latino farm families. Others project members will continue their work in drawing youth into assessments of the local food environment and changes that might be made to make this environment healthier. Still others are engaging with community members to increase the use of local foods into institutional settings such as schools. Future work by these project members will involve compiling and describing the successes and failures in participatory research in the food system. While not using participatory research methods in the purest sense, several other members of this regional project have received funding to implement and assess the impacts of school gardens and cooking lessons involving children and their parents on childrens intake of fruits and vegetables. These projects will follow over 1,500 children and their parents over a 2-year period and include treatment and control groups. Community volunteers will participate in the planning and execution of this research. Objective 3 will be accomplished by the end of the fourth year of the project.

Measurement of Progress and Results

Outputs

• Focus group and survey data of local populations will be obtained on values, attitudes, norms, priorities, knowledge and behaviors of families that shape how they make decisions about food and eating practices, as well as interactions with store managers and/or pantry managers.
• Interview data of pantry directors regarding access for food.
• Dietary intake, body composition, available food nutrient composition, and meal planning data.
• Translation/compilation of data into feedback for participants.
• Train Master Wellness and Master Gardener Volunteers.

Outcomes or Projected Impacts

• To improve community health and well-being by decreasing food insecurity and poor food choices. This will be assessed by evaluating the positive action steps developed through the participatory stage after data collection, and may include actions by food pantry managers to better meet household need; actions by community groups, local food policy councils, legislative groups, community action groups, tribal councils, state legislatures, and others to better plan allocation of resources and the development of strategies to improve community security, and access to healthy food choices reflective of the Dietary Guidelines; actions by families to improve their meal planning, thus reducing obesity or risk of chronic disease; actions by store managers to better meet the needs of their customers for healthy food choices; and actions by schools to improve food choices through school lunch, vending machine policies, and school garden projects. As appropriate, these outcomes will be compared to the Healthy People 2020 (2009) objectives. The food decision-making systems of families and communities interact at multiple levels, and can develop families' appreciation of nourishing foods grown sustainably to shape the community food system. These interactions impact the appreciation, availability, and accessibility (AAA) of foods that promote family and community health and well-being by improving eating practices and food choices and increasing demand for sustainably produced foods.
• Train and sustain Master Wellness and Master Gardener volunteers who will continue to work with participating schools and expand the number of participating schools in order to increase fruit and vegetable consumption by children and their families.

Milestones

(2012): Using data collected in the first year of the project, papers will be presented at regional and national conferences. Proposals for external funding will have been submitted.

(2013): Papers will have been accepted for publication.

(2014): Evaluation evidence will have been generated regarding the effectiveness of various interventions (e.g., school gardening and cooking at home) undertaken by project members.

Projected Participation

View Appendix E: Participation

Outreach Plan

The outreach plan has two primary dimensions. The first includes the dissemination of results and outputs to academic and policy-oriented audiences. The second involves direct engagement and collaboration with community stakeholders to develop strategies to enhance health and well-being. This second component is further divided into two key elements: (a) to increase community understanding of the complex relationships amongst food systems, health and well-being, and (b) to increase the efficacy of the overall research strategy that utilizes a collaborative approach in design and analysis, and thus helps citizens engage in the process of achieving optimal health and well-being. Our approach to outreach and engagement  pursuant to Objective 3 of the project  will comprise a range of efforts that reflect the integrated research and extension programs of project participants.


All participants in this project have a long history of disseminating their work on food systems, health, and well-being in a wide range of outlets, including published scholarly work and conference presentations. Research results from this project will be disseminated through all possible channels, including refereed journals, book chapters, policy briefs, Extension bulletins, and other research reports. This work will also be presented at regional and national professional meetings. Given that the research team is multidisciplinary, results will reach the professional associations of a variety of disciplines, including economics, geography, nutrition, and sociology. Meetings will likely include the annual meetings of the American Society for Nutrition Society, the Rural Sociological Society, the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society, and others. Results will also be communicated to various state and local agencies, and presented in meetings in which citizens and government officials are present.


Our approach borrows extensively from Collaborative Engaged Research (CER) methodologies, which integrate research for generating scholarly knowledge into community-led change programs that work with people rather than doing research on people that inspire people to improve systems and change behavior in addition to scholarly analysis and assessment on systems that influence health and well-being. The use of a CER also increases the effectiveness of outreach. Thus, one CER tool helps food decision makers map their food system actors and examine their working relationships. Another tool poses questions for food system decision makers to help them reflect on their food and eating routines, decision-making processes, and the alignment of these practices with their family goals and values. In one example, CER has been used to integrate research and program development and evaluation for the NY cooperative extension parent-child workshops, Cooking Together for Family Meals.


Existing and proposed research are strongly linked to stakeholders in each of the participating states, ranging from public health to community leaders working with food security, food banks, and poverty issues to farmers and media. Participatory research will feed directly back into the community. Findings will be shared with communities and they will be encouraged and supported in responding to our findings. Further, it is expected that many of the relationships begun in this work will continue to be developed over time. Specific examples of ongoing engaged work follow.


Two of the research groups have engaged with the underserved, youth groups and other community stakeholders and decision makers using CER methodologies (Gillespie 2010), and will experiment with other means for creating community access to research such as is done through science shops in Dutch universities. According to Busch and Middendorf (1997), these shops provide technical assistance to nonprofit groups that request it and provide access to scientific resources to those who otherwise might not have had access. While university-based research, education, and outreach programs have not always served or been accountable to people of color and underserved populations (Slocum 2006), in this project we will develop an inclusive, community oriented, participatory approach. This will require a focused effort to work with groups that have historically had less ability to access and benefit from university programs than have traditional agricultural clients.


Project members will develop and disseminate information to assist local food pantries, participants in community gardens, and families to obtain more nutrient-dense and less energy-dense foods. One group is implementing teams combining expertise of nutrition, community development, and health communication to work with 8-10 food pantries to improve nutritional quality of food distributed and consumed, focusing on strategies related to food availability (donor education), distribution (pantry education), and consumption (client education).


However, the project will not take a top-down approach in these endeavors but instead will enlist the very people in need of assistance in designing and testing the effectiveness of potential interventions. Participatory research is described by some as Participatory Action Research (PAR), which has been used by some to empower local communities. Nutrition researchers in Canada, for example, have employed this technique in the study of perceived decline in traditional foodways among indigenous peoples (Chan and Kuhnlein, 2003; Gittelsohn et al., 2010); researchers working with the Los Angeles Unified School District developed research questions and conducted interviews with students and school officials (Patel et al., 2009). Among our project members, some will work with ethnic minority communities to assist them in engaging their local food systems, while assisting local professionals in engaging Latino audiences, identifying local markets, and sustaining support programs for Latino farm families. Others project members have attempted to draw youth into assessments of the local food environment and changes that might be made to make this environment healthier. Still others are engaging with community members to increase the use of local foods in institutional settings such as schools. Future work by these project members will involve compiling and describing the successes and failures in participatory research in the food system.


Another group has taken the research results about nutritional needs and diets of food pantry household clients and used it to develop a pilot food systems approach to better meeting household needs. With a team comprised of a nutritionist, health communications specialist, and community development extension specialist, this group will work with pantries on food availability (through donor education and campaigns, establishing alliances with community gardens and master gardener programs, farmers markets, etc.), distribution and access (through strategies to distribute food more according to health vulnerabilities in households, etc.), and consumption (primarily through client education).


This group is also using the research that goes into constructing a hunger atlas to help community groups, local food policy councils, legislative groups, community action groups, and others better plan the allocation of resources and the development of strategies to improve community food security. Some of this will be done through the development of Extension bulletins and policy briefs; others will be helping communities do their own local assessments of food insecurity and program effectiveness.


Another intervention project involves a Junior Master Gardener volunteer working with third graders and their teachers to create a school garden. This also involves a group of community volunteers who will assist with the garden and hopefully provide sustainability for the school garden. This project, if funded, will involve schools in Texas, Indiana, and West Virginia.


The research teams in California will continue collaboration with an alliance of community groups in the Central Coast of California working to improve the health and well-being of all students. In the San Francisco Bay Area, researchers will collaborate with county public health departments to integrate behavioral surveys conducted at the local level to both evaluate the GIS-derived model results and influence potential future approaches.

Organization/Governance

This multistate research group will be governed by a group that includes an elected Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Reporting Coordinator, Publications Coordinator, and Grants Coordinator. This distributed leadership model is designed to ensure shared commitment and responsibility for the projects success. Officers will be elected for at least two-year terms, with turnover on alternate years in order to provide continuity. Elections will be held at the annual meeting. Administrative guidance will be provided by an assigned Administrative Advisor and a CSREES Representative.


Duties of the Chair include: Coordinating the governance group, including developing plans and holding periodic conference calls. Developing the agenda for annual meetings in consultation with the governance group. Facilitating annual meetings and any periodic teleconferences that include the whole group. Approving meeting minutes and annual reports. Consulting with Administrative Advisor and CSREES Representative. Secure approval for annual meeting from Administrative Advisor.


Duties of the Vice-Chair include: Selecting site for annual meeting in consultation with governance group. Coordinating logistics of annual meeting, including hotel, meeting space, meals, finances, and registration.


Duties of the Secretary include: Taking minutes at group meetings and submitting them for review to the group within two weeks of the meeting. Posting the meeting minutes on the NIMSS website within 60 days after the meeting.


Duties of the Reporting Coordinator include: Write the projects annual report and post on the NIMSS website within 60 days after the meeting. This involves documenting collaborative activities and collecting annual activity reports and publications from each active member. Work with governance group to produce final report and submit within 60 days of projects completion.


Duties of the Publications Coordinator include: Investigating publication vehicles for the groups collective and collaborative work; coordinating development of such products; overseeing editorial procedures.


Duties of the Grants Coordinator include: Investigating grant opportunities for collaborative work among group members; coordinating development of grant proposals.


Officers will be elected from the core group membership. Core members are those who are engaged in research and education projects described in the project objectives and methods and who participate actively in NC-1033 group endeavors. Core members agree to submit their annual reports and publications to the Reporting Coordinator within 30 days of the annual meeting in order to give the recorder time to consolidate the material for the report.

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Attachments

Land Grant Participating States/Institutions

CA, FL, HI, IL, IN, KS, MA, MD, MI, MN, MO, MS, NJ, OH, OK, TX

Non Land Grant Participating States/Institutions

California-Santa Cruz, Cornell University