Maine Prevention reSearCh Center
While educating individuals to improve their nutrition and increase physical activity is an important strategy for obesity prevention, research has shown that changing the environment in which people work, live, play, and learn, and focusing on making the healthy choice the easy choice, will have a much greater impact on health.
The Maine Prevention Research Center at UNE’s School of Community and Population Health plays a leadership role in policy, program research and development, and in research translation and capacity building. With its mission to reduce weight-related morbidity and mortality by promoting evidence- based practice, the Center has worked with public health advocates to help change the environment so it better supports good nutrition and increased opportunities for physical activity. UNE’s role has been to identify policies and practices that are more likely to result in positive change and ensure the research supports the policy initiatives.
Funded primarily by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and working in partnership with the Harvard School of Public Health and Maine CDC, UNE’s Maine Prevention Research Center is able to bring researchers to Maine in yearly conferences on specific obesity topics to launch policy initiatives.
Bryony Kean, R.D., M.S., Nutrition Educator at Coastal Healthy Communities Coalition, teaches a Simply Good Eating class to 11 ladies at a low-income senior housing complex in southern Maine.
Examples of obesity prevention policies UNE’s Maine Prevention Research Center has worked on include:
• UNE’s Maine Prevention Research Center supported organizations interested in improving the foods and beverages offered in schools.
As a result, Maine was one of the first school sytems in the country to eliminate soda sales in schools at all hours. The
Center also provided research to public health advocates that informed the passage of a law that restricts junk
food advertising in Maine schools.
• UNE obesity prevention researchers have evaluated the implementation of Maine’s laws
banning junk foods and marketing and have provided recommendations for improvement.
For instance, research led by Michele Polacsek, Ph.D., M.H.S., and funded by the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, showed unhealthy food and beverage marketing in all schools, even after the state law
was passed. This research has resulted in further work with the Healthy Maine Partnerships and local schools to improve the law’s implementation.
• Polacsek is using a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) that brings together scientific data, health expertise and public input to examine the potential health and other impacts of a Sweetened Excise Tax to help address the obesity epidemic.
• UNE researchers worked with the Maine CDC and the Maine Nutrition Network to implement an evidence-based program in child care centers to improve their nutrition and physical activity policies and practices.
• The Center has developed materials and training for primary care providers to address obesity with their patients, especially pediatric patients and their families.
• An exciting new initiative is a partnership with the Harvard School of Public Health Department of Nutrition to examine the purchasing habits of SNAP users and work with a grocery retail chain to affect store choice architecture to motivate SNAP users to make healthier purchases.
This work is in the planning stages now.
Although the old adage “you are what you eat” is still true today, we also know that we are products of the environment in which we live, work and play. Today at UNE, the complexities of the obesity epidemic, how it is integrated into the fabric of our society, and how to stem its growth are not only being unraveled, but also becoming available for our students to discover.
Healthy Maine Partnership Evaluation Faculty and staff at UNE’s School of Community and Population Health have a long history of working in a variety of ways with Maine’s community-based public health infrastructure, the Healthy Maine Partnerships (HMPs). Since 2000, local HMP coalitions—now 27 in all— have been working with schools, municipalities and businesses, helping them to make policies and changes to the local environment that will promote healthier living. HMPs especially target tobacco use, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and
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Michele Polacsek, Ph.D., M.H.S., associate professor, received her Master's degree in international Health and her Doctoral degree in Public Health Social and Behavioral Science from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Having taught at UNE’s Master of Public Health Program since 2006, her research has focused on childhood obesity prevention. Her work on community and medical setting-based interventions to prevent obesity has been published in journals such as Pediatrics.
substance abuse. For example, they encourage safe bicycle routes for commuting to work and school, healthier foods in vending machines, and prohibiting tobacco at public recreation sites and events.
For several years UNE research faculty and staff at the SCPH have been studying what HMPs do and what their impact has been, on the obesity epidemic as well as on tackling other health problems. The team has just completed focus groups of staff from all local HMPs to better understand how they operate. Team members are now interviewing key informants about HMP efforts to reduce health disparities. This year the team is surveying superintendents of all school administration units in Maine to learn about their policies and actions to reduce tobacco use and to encourage physical activity and healthy eating.
In assessing results from HMP obesity prevention efforts in years 2007-2011, evaluators found the following outcomes as a result of HMP work:
• Most small businesses and municipalities are aware of the “Right to Breastfeed” law in Maine.
• Fewer schools offer unhealthy snack foods or beverages, and more offer healthy food options.
• More schools with school health coordinators offer physical activity clubs, and their students watch less television.
• Municipalities are circulating information that promotes cardiovascular health.
As part of their work, the evaluation team also tracks health data throughout the state—especially adult and youth smoking rates, overweight and obesity rates, prevalence of high blood pressure and high cholesterol. The next goal is to discover connections between the work of the local HMP coalitions and the health of the population.
SCHOOL AND ORGANiZATiONAL iNDiViDUAL AND HOUSEHOLD