About the Project 
 

• To provide knowledge, skills, tools and resources that local nutrition professionals and local health assessment coordinators can use to do community nutrition assessment.

• To promote the inclusion of nutritional issues in local health assessments.

• To establish ongoing collaboration between local health assessment coordinators and nutritionists and state and local nutrition assessment efforts.

As the Washington State Nutrition Data Steering Committee has gained experience working with existing, data, primary data collection, the development of nutritional status indicators, and the process of local health community assessment, several lessons have been learned. These may be summarized as: 

• There is strong interest in including nutrition assessment in local plans. There is a widespread understanding about the importance of nutrition to health, but nutrition has seldom been included in Washington State local assessments to date.
• Community members may not think of nutrition as a health area that should be included in community planning efforts when they are asked to list areas of concern. Other health related concerns may seem to have a higher priority because of media attention or perceived personal relevance. 
• Local assessment coordinators express a need for specific local nutritional data that are easy to interpret and present to the public.
• There are several sources of nutrition related data at the state and national level, but local access to these data is difficult.
• Local assessment coordinators are very interested in the development of appropriate nutrition questions for future health surveys and in being kept abreast of planned surveys.
• There are many potential collaborative relationships between local health departments and individuals, agencies and organizations that promote nutritional well being, but these groups may not currently be working together.
• The data presented in the VISTA program as well as web based census data can be a useful tool for local nutrition assessment.
• Local personnel, both local assessment coordinators and local public health nutritionists, are interested in real-life steps that they can take to assess the nutritional status of their community and implement effective programs.
• The materials developed by the Association of State and Territorial Pubic Health Nutrition Directors, Moving to the Future: Developing Community-Based Nutrition Services (text and workbook) provide an excellent step by step guide for community assessment. Our work in Washington State can be built on the ASTNPN work. 

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1. To develop case studies of successful community nutrition assessment projects in King, Spokane, Whatcom, and Clark Counties to be posted on the public health nutrition web site and used in training.

2. To develop a web based series of documents (that can be printed as needed) to promote community nutrition assessment in Washington State. To include:

• A brief section on conducting a community needs assessment with references to other sources for more in-depth coverage.
• Washington state specific nutrition Indicators.
• Washington state nutrition risk and projective factors.
• Nutrition data sources: local, state, and national (with links where available).
• An annotated bibliography, "Essential Library," for those who want to understand particular topics.
• Data sources for describing community: VISTA, census web pages, etc.
• Examples of nutrition and population related data that were used in the Oregon nutrition assessment document.
• Specific question sets that have been previously developed – such as the hunger assessment questions, BRFSS questions, and PANTS questions.
• Methods of analyzing data that local coordinators might already have such as the BRFSS questions about fruits and vegetables.
• Examples of documents that have been prepared using data from surveys or other assessment techniques.

3. To provide an environment that promotes relationships between local assessment coordinators and local nutritionists.

• Provide list of local assessment coordinators and identify at least one nutritionist from each local jurisdiction who agrees to serve as a contact person.
• Provide a list of potential collaborative agencies and contact information.

4. To promote the use of the community nutrition assessment information, tools and resources within Washington State through:

• Training at professional meetings such as the annual conjoint meeting, WSDA meeting, WIC meetings.
• Marketing to nutritionists and the public health community through newsletters and listserves.

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Community Nutrition Assessment