Building family and community capacity for thoughtful food decisions through leadership development, research, and education.

Poverty and food insecurity affect the health and well-being of families. However, we know less about the mechanisms or processes which result in better health for some families than others in similar circumstances. Our previous research indicates thte family food decision-making is an important link between the community food and other systems and children`s outcomes. Therefore, we are interested in understanding more about family food decision-making and variation among families, communities, and countries.

We have developed educational and research tools to improve scientific understanding about family food decision-making and to assist professional and para-professional educators who work directly with families in nutrition education. We have conducted interviews with low income famlies in rural and urban sites in the U.S. and the Philippines. Work is in progress for a research survey questionnaire on Family Food Decision-making. We have engaged professionals, para-professionals, researchers, and students in developing these tools as an educational process for developing current and future nutrition educators. We have combined local and professional knowledge and experience in nutrition education and food decision-making with our research findings to develop these web-based discussion guides and research instrument. We are conducting interviews with at risk families in an the Philippines, a rural community in the midwest, and an urban minority community in the NE. And finally, we have conducted workshops with nutrition educators and other health professionals to improve their understanding of the family food decision-making cycle, trade-offs and barriers which families experience, pre-test the tools.
Funding has been secured for a workshop in 2006 to educate professionals and paraprofessionals on use of the tools and identify additional tools needed.

We presented papers at state, national, and international scientific meetings and in counties in NY. Four students conducted independent research on the application of the food decision-making cycle and tools for nutrition education and research. Current and future nutrition and health educators and/or practitioners have contributed to the food decision-making tools as they learned about the family food decision-making cycle and it's use in nutrition education. We have completed the following tools in the toolkit: (1) two discussion guides for families for making decisions about food and eating and for addressing a family goal to reduce the risk of obesity; (2) an activity to encourage systems thinking and recognition on interdependency among food system stakeholders and professionals; (3)a survey for program evaluation and/or community-based research on family food decision-making.

Food Decision-making

• Kathleen Dischner (CCE, Onondaga Co)
• Helen Howard (CCE, Tompkins Co)