CommentaryRaising the Bar for Practice and Research Collaborations

People want to eat for health and theycan learn to do it. The work reportedin this supplement by the CaliforniaDepartment of Public Health presentseffective, efficient examples of how todo it. The reports will warm the heartsof practitioners who search for evi-dence to support their work and of in-vestigators who prefer to researchquestions that are practitioners’ prior-ities. It is a challenge to maintain pro-grams and engage clients to the extentneeded to evaluate the effect of a pro-gram. This supplement reports inno-vative approaches to ongoing issuesin programs and evaluation includingitems added to existing surveys, nutri-tion activities integrated into existingschool curriculum using teachers,health educators implementing curric-ulum in community health centers,and interventions suppliedatworksitesall with tight evaluations. Through theteamwork of program leaders, imple-menters, and professional evaluators,an array of strategies are describedhere. They testify to the stamina ofevaluation leadership in design, datacollection, and analysis. I’d like tohighlight just a few of these articles:

It requires discipline to documentchanges over a 10-year time spanreported in ‘‘Fruit and Vegetable Con-sumption.’’ The investigators main-tain a constant measure and carefuldocumentation of the historicalevents of importance to the depen-dent variable and its measurement.Although there are unavoidable issuesin this report, the investigators retainrigor in the measure and remain cog-nizant of environmental changes.1

The methodology developed andexecuted in the article on a ‘‘ScoringSystem’’ in retail food storesmoves be-yond the ease of collecting electronicfood purchasing receipt data to

include environmental factors thatmay affect consumer purchase.Through diligent reliability documen-tation and exemplary engagement ofthe community in the design, execu-tion, and interpretation of the study,the authors present meaningful re-sults for use in interventions.2

Adding an intervention, ‘‘FSORK’’,into a large system such as Supple-mental Nutrition Assistance Program(SNAP) requires tenacity on the partof the investigator and staff. The mea-surement of unaided recall, self-efficacy, ‘‘eyes on screen’’ of a video,and observations of materials usageprovides the reader with sound infor-mation on implementation andresults.3

The report on ‘‘Social NetworkAnalysis’’ takes on the formidablechallenge of documenting eleven re-gional partnerships and collabora-tions of organizations over five yearsusing data from semi-annual progressreports. By taking a formal metho-dology, sociograms and networkstatistics, and applying it to an admin-istrative function, the authors linktheory and practice. Though not per-fect, it provides evidence of regionalnetwork form (participation and cov-erage) and function (fragmentationand density statistics) for realitiesthat practitioners think are true aswell as provides new insights foreffective collaboration.4

In ‘‘Building Evaluation Capacity’’,the reader will see enough to under-stand the progress that is made withforty-eight projects over five years.They steadily increase the evaluationcompetence of intervention programsand develop tools for local use for pro-cedures such as summary statisticalanalysis of dietary intake for programevaluation purposes.5

This supplement will be useful inclasses about nutrition educationand behavior providing examplesthat are not perfect but move usa notch closer to useful results forpractice. The evidence will assist thepractitioner in substantiating budgetitems both for supplies and staff ef-fort. This supplement provides a greatopportunity to learn from each other.

Janice Dodds, EdD, RDGuest Editor, Professor emeritus,

Department of Nutrition, University ofNorth Carolina - Chapel Hill

REFERENCES

1. Sugerman S, Foerster SB, Gregson J,Linares A, Hudes M. California Adultsincrease fruit and vegetable consumptionfrom 1997-2007. J Nutr Educ Behav.2011;43:S96-S103.

2. Ghirardelli A, Quinn V, Sugerman S.Reliability of a retail food store surveyand development of an accompanyingretail scoring system to communicatesurvey findings and identify vendorsfor healthful food and marketing initia-tives. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2011;43:S104-S112.

3. Ghirardelli A, Linares A, Fong A. Usageand recall of the Food Stamp OfficeResource Kit (FSORK) by food stampapplicants in 4 California counties.J Nutr Educ Behav. 2011;43:S86-S95.

4. Gregson J, Sowa M, Kohler Flynn H.Evaluating form and function of regionalpartnerships: applying social networkanalysis to the Network for a HealthyCalifornia, 2001-2007. J Nutr Educ Behav.2011;43:S67-S74.

5. Fourney A, Gregson J, Sugerman S,Bellow A. Building evaluation capacityin local programs for multisite nutritioneducation interventions. J Nutr EducBehav. 2011;43:S130-S136.