State Policy Classification System and Policies that Influence the School Physical Education and Nutrition Environment The objectives of this task order are to (1) identify and analyze physical education- and nutrition-related statutes and regulations for the years 2008, 2010 and 2012 (2) refine, as necessary, the school based physical education and nutrition-related coding system to reflect recent published policy recommendations for schools;(3) make the data available electronically (i.e., grid-enabled) for researchers to analyze with other national datasets on obesity in youth;and (4) make the data available in a user friendly format on the NCI website. The NCI will produce a database of coded statutory and regulatory data files of policies related to youth obesity (SPSS and Excel data base files). The database would help researchers, public health practitioners, and policy makers by providing the framework to evaluate the impact of policies on the school environment and individual behavioral outcomes. Also, the database can provide a valuable tool to help states monitor changes over time as they relate to these policy areas. Youth obesity-related policies (legislative and regulatory) have never been tracked before in a systematic way nor do we have a comprehensive system to evaluate the impact of these policies on environmental determinants and population-level behavior. It is anticipated that identifying and analyzing physical education- and nutrition-related statutes and regulations can lead to the discovery of innovative strategies to decrease the current childhood obesity epidemic. The MayaTech Corporation is a local applied social science research firm with particular expertise in policy measurement and evaluation and they have supported NCI since 2003 to develop and implement the nutrition and PE systems that are the focus for this procurement. The objectives of this task order are to (1) identify and analyze physical education- and nutrition-related statutes and regulations for the years 2008, 2010, and 2012;(2) refine the existing physical education classification system to include a physical activity scale and update based on new national recommendations;(3) refine the existing nutrition classification as a appropriate;(3) to assist with making the data collected from 2003 to 2012 publicly available for analysis. Childhood obesity is on the rise in the US;therefore, addressing the obesity epidemic is particularly important given its projected impact on the health care system. Policy-based approaches focused on the school environment are believed to impact the current childhood obesity epidemic. The NCI developed two rating system to monitor legislative and regulatory state policies. The two systems are the (1) School Nutrition-Environment State Policy Classification System (SNESPCS);and (2) the Physical Education Related State Policy Classification System (PERSPCS). To date, state school policies focused on physical education and nutrition were coded and rated in 2003 through 2007. Two methodology papers describing the two classification systems were published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine 2007. Since the publishing of several reports, including the Institute of Medicine's recent recommendations ?Nutrition Standards for Foods in Schools: Leading the Way toward Healthier Youth?, several nutrition related school policies have been enacted. Similarly, the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), in direct response to reports of an obesity epidemic among school-aged children, issued a report outlining recommended school policies and recommendations to policy makers (NASBE, 2009).Starting in 2008, a biannual longitudinal assessment of policy changes is being proposed to document recent policy changes and to assess change over time. Evaluating youth obesity-related school policies focused on nutrition and physical education would provide a wealth of knowledge that can be used to combat childhood obesity. This project fits within the NIH and NCI directors'interest, which is to develop new initiatives to address the current obesity epidemic. Other areas of interest included in this project would be to explore nutrition menu content requirements and/or extracurricular school activity questions that could be added to the existing rating system. Over the past several years, there has been greater emphasis on data sharing and dissemination as important priorities for the NIH. The development of cyberinfrastructure (e.g., caBIG(R);cancer biomedical informatics grid) has enabled researchers to store, share, link and analyze datasets related to cancer research. Making the data collected from this project grid-enabled would accelerate the analysis and dissemination of information.
