Expansion of the 2005 California Health Interview Survey to include community trends in children's healthy eating and physical activity

One of the Foundation's strategies to combat childhood obesity is to identify promising policies and practices in schools and communities that can be evaluated for effectiveness. The California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) presents an important tool for this purpose. Unlike virtually all other high-quality health surveys, CHIS provides detailed estimates of health status at the county and city levels. This permits more effective planning, evaluation, and advocacy on local health issues. California communities were surveyed in 2001 and 2003, with a third wave planned for early 2005. CHIS receives broad funding from California and federal sources. However, none of these sources will fund survey modules related to childhood obesity. The purpose of this project is to expand the number and quality of survey items related to childhood obesity. The project deliverable will be a data set identifying individual community trends in children's healthy eating and physical activity in 2005. This data set, easily linked to CHIS 2001 and CHIS 2003, will be available in public use formats on the Web, the Foundation's Web site, and confidential data sets obtainable through CHIS. The project will be considered successful if it provides individual California communities with a way to evaluate their efforts to combat childhood obesity. It will also be considered successful if it points to local variations in policy and environment that are linked to local trends in healthy eating and physical activity. If so, more targeted investigation can then help to establish which local policies and practices are effective.

Grant Details

Amount Awarded $698,035.00

Awarded on: 3/4/2005

Time frame: 3/15/2005 - 9/14/2006

Grant Number: 52052