Nutrition Support Project

Children’s Healthy Living (CHL) Center of Excellence

The Children’s Healthy Living Program (CHL) for Remote Underserved Minority Populations in the Pacific Region represented the first attempt to investigate the dietary intakes of children residing across this area. The vision of the CHL program was to prevent young child obesity by fostering a health-promoting environment in remote underserved Native populations in the Pacific.

The CHL protocol included asking parents/caregivers to record food and beverage intakes of their children using the CHL Center Food & Activity Log (FAL). A parent/caregiver was assigned two 24-hour periods based on the CHL “two-day” schedule to complete the two-day dietary record. The NSSR assisted with editing and updating the manuals relevant to implementation of the CHL Center Study (e.g., Dietary data entry manual), updated Data Entry Rules, assisted with data entry training, reviewed the accuracy of data entry from the food and activity logs, provided quality control checks, provided FAL related variable information to the data dictionary and other duties as needed for successful implementation of dietary assessment activities of CHL Center.

Examples of manuscripts from the CHL Study:

Effect of the Children's Healthy Living Program on young child overweight, obesity, and acanthosis nigricans in the US-Affiliated Pacific Region: A randomized clinical trial. Novotny R, Davis J, Butel J, Boushey CJ, Fialkowski MK, Nigg CR, Braun KL, Leon Guerrero RT, Coleman P, Bersamin A, Areta AAR, Barber LR Jr, Belyeu-Camacho T, Greenberg J, Fleming T, Dela Cruz-Talbert E, Yamanaka A, Wilkens LR. JAMA Netw Open. 2018 Oct 5;1(6):e183896. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.3896. PMID:30646266

Collecting wrappers, labels, and packages to enhance accuracy of food records among children 2-8 years in the Pacific region: Children's Healthy Living Program (CHL). Yonemori KM, Ennis T, Novotny R, Fialkowski MK, Ettienne R, Wilkens LR, Leon Guerrero RT, Bersamin A, Coleman P, Li F, Boushey CJ. J Food Compost Anal. 2017 Dec;64(Pt 1):112-118. doi: 10.1016/j.jfca.2017.04.012. Epub 2017 Apr 23. PMID: 29398780

Children's Healthy Living (CHL) Program for remote underserved minority populations in the Pacific region: rationale and design of a community randomized trial to prevent early childhood obesity. Wilken LR, Novotny R, Fialkowski MK, Boushey CJ, Nigg C, Paulino Y, Leon Guerrero R, Bersamin A, Vargo D, Kim J, Deenik J. BMC Public Health. 2013 Oct 9;13:944. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-13-944. PMID: 24107083