Under current United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) guidelines, Arizona schools participating in the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program are reimbursed for the meals they serve students through federal dollars and co-pays from student families. For this analysis, our goal was to estimate the cost to the State of Arizona if the breakfast and lunch co-pays for students that qualify for reduced-price meals were covered by the state.

This mixed methods research report examined the user experience preferences and expectations automotive enthusiast audiences have for Discount Tire's marketing blog and provided a WordPress theme recommendation on the basis of data collected via a mixed methods cross sectional survey of over 100 participants. Participant behaviors in the context of online tire research were analyzed against collected demographic data.

Beginning in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a sudden and severe economic downturn and led to disruptions in domestic and international food systems and supply chains. Over the first few months of the pandemic, in the United States, many stores had empty shelves, bars and restaurants closed, and children could no longer go to school. The unemployment rate increased from 3.5% in February 2020 to 14.8% in April 2020, leading to economic instability for many households. As a result, household food insecurity, defined as having limited or inconsistent access to nutritious and affordable food, increased rapidly.

During the first months of 2021, vaccinations began rolling out, more individuals returned to in-person work, children to schools, and restrictions were gradually phased out. Unemployment has decreased since the April 2020 peak to 5.4% in July 2021, but remains above pre-pandemic levels. This brief describes the prevalence of household food insecurity, job disruptions, and food-related behaviors as reported by a nationally representative sample of 1,643 U.S. adults, both in the year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2019 – March 2020) and during the first four months of 2021 (January – April 2021), a period representing approximately one year since the onset of the pandemic.

Relationships between food and physical activity (PA) environments and children's related behaviors are complex.

Latent class analyses derived patterns from proximity to healthy and unhealthy food outlets, PA facilities and parks, and counts of residential dwellings and intersections. Regression analyses examined whether derived classes were related to food consumption, PA, and overweight among 404 low-income children.

Compared to children living in Low PA-Low Food environments, children in High Intersection&Parks-Moderate Density&Food, and High Density-Low Parks-High Food environments, had significantly greater sugar-sweetened beverage consumption (ps<0.01) and overweight/obesity (ps<0.001). Children in the High Density-Low Parks-High Food environments were more likely to walk to destinations (p = 0.01)

Recognizing and leveraging beneficial aspects of neighborhood patterns may be more effective at positively influencing children's eating and PA behaviors compared to isolating individual aspects of the built environment.

Purpose: To develop a valid and feasible short-form corner store audit tool (SCAT) that could be used in-store or over the phone to capture the healthfulness of corner stores.

Design: Nonexperimental.

Setting: Four New Jersey cities.

Subjects: Random selection of 229 and 96 corner stores in rounds 1 and 2, respectively.

Measures: An adapted version of the Nutrition Environment Measures Survey for Corner Stores (NEMS-CS) was used to conduct in-store audits. The 7-item SCAT was developed and used for round 2 phone audits.

Analysis: Exploratory factor analysis and item response theory were used to develop the SCAT.

Results: The SCAT was highly correlated with the adapted NEMS-CS ( r = .79). Short-form corner store audit tool scores placed stores in the same healthfulness categories as did the adapted NEMS-CS in 88% of the cases. Phone response matches indicated that store owners did not distinguish between 2% and low-fat milk and tended to round up the fruit and vegetable count to 5 if they had fewer varieties.

Conclusion: The SCAT discriminates between higher versus lower healthfulness scores of corner stores and is feasible for use as a phone audit tool.

Background: Understanding determinants of high consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), a highly prevalent obesogenic behavior, will help build effective customized public health interventions.

Objective: Our aim was to identify child and parent lifestyle and household demographic factors predictive of high SSB consumption frequency in children from low-income, ethnically diverse communities that may help inform public health interventions.

Design: We used a cross-sectional telephone household survey.

Participants/setting: Participants were 717 boys and 686 girls aged 3 to 18 years old from the New Jersey Childhood Obesity Study living in five low-income cities (Camden, New Brunswick, Newark, Trenton, and Vineland). The adult most knowledgeable about household food shopping completed a questionnaire over the telephone inquiring about their and their child's dietary and physical activity habits, and household-, parent-, and child-level demographics.

Main outcome measures: Child's SSB consumption frequency was measured.

Statistical analysis performed: Multivariate ordered logit models were designed to investigate a variety of variables hypothesized to affect the frequency of SSB consumption. Exploratory stratified analyses by race, sex, and age were also conducted.

Results: Eight percent of our study participants never consumed SSBs, 45% consumed SSBs at least once per day, and 23% consumed twice or more per day. SSB consumption was higher among children 12 to 18 years vs 3 to 5 years (P<0.0001), of non-Hispanic black vs non-Hispanic white race/ethnicity (P=0.010), who were moderate fast food consumers vs never consumers (P=0.003), and those whose parents were high vs low SSB consumers (P<0.0001). Living in a non-English-speaking household (P=0.030), having a parent with a college or higher education vs less than high school (P=0.003), and having breakfast 6 to 7 days/wk vs never to 2 days/wk or less were associated with lower SSB consumption (P=0.001).

Conclusions: We identified a number of household-, parent-, and child-level predictors of SSB consumption, which varied by race, sex, and age, useful for building customized interventions targeting certain behaviors in ethnically diverse, low-income children.

Objective: This study compared the prices of unhealthy (chips) and healthy (ready-to-eat fruit) snacks that students are likely to purchase from corner stores.

Methods: Snacks were purchased from 325 New Jersey corner stores; chip prices were compared with fruit prices overall and by store sales volume and block group characteristics.

Results: Prices did not differ significantly between chips and fruit in the overall sample in which both items were available (n = 104) (chips: $0.46 ± $0.15; fruit: $0.49 ± $0.19; P = .48) or by store or block group characteristics. Neither mean fruit prices nor mean chip prices differed by store sales volume or by neighborhood characteristics.

Conclusions and implications: Promoting ready-to-eat fruits in corner stores to children as a price-neutral alternative to calorically dense snacks can be a viable strategy to improve the nutritional quality of snacks commonly purchased at corner stores.

The U.S. Preventive Task Force recommends that all patients be screened for obesity and given appropriate weight loss advice, if needed, as nutrition counseling by primary care physicians is a key objective for Healthy People 2020. This study assesses the association between health care provider's (HCP) advice to lose weight and eating behaviors among obese individuals. Data were collected using a household survey of adults in five New Jersey cities in 2009–10. Analyses presented are limited to 548 obese participants. Negative-binomial regression analysis determined the association of participants' eating behaviors and HCP's advice to lose weight, after adjusting for the participant's attempt to lose weight and demographic variables. Despite being obese, only 48% of the participants received weight loss advice from their HCP while 68% stated they were attempting to lose weight. HCP's advice to lose weight was associated with increased salad and fruit consumption (PR 1.3, 95% CI 1.06-1.61; PR 1.23, 95% CI 1.02-1.48). Attempting to lose weight was positively associated with a higher consumption of fruit (PR 1.39, 95% CI 1.13-1.72), vegetables (PR 1.22, 95% CI 1.07-1.39), and with eating fruits and vegetables as snacks (PR 1.62, 95% CI 1.28-2.05). Attempting to lose weight was negatively associated with consumption of sweet snacks (PR 0.68, 95% CI 0.49-0.94), sugar sweetened beverages (PR 0.71, 95% CI 0.58-0.87) and fast food (PR 0.77, 95% CI 0.62-0.97). There were no significant interactions between HCP's advice and attempts to lose weight. Obese adult's attempt to lose weight, and not HCP's advice to lose weight, was a predictor for healthy eating behaviors. Interventions in medical practices should train HCPs on effective strategies for motivating obese patients to adopt healthier lifestyles.