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Neighborhood Eating and Activity Advocacy Teams (NEAAT): engaging older adults in policy activities to improve food and physical environments

  • Case Study
  • Published:
Translational Behavioral Medicine

ABSTRACT

Local food and physical activity environments are known to impact health, and older adults are generally more vulnerable to health-related environmental impacts due to poorer physical function and mobility impairments. There is a need to develop cost-conscious, community-focused strategies that impact local food and physical activity environment policies. Engaging older adult community residents in assessment and advocacy activities is one avenue to address this need. We describe the Neighborhood Eating and Activity Advocacy Team project, a community-based participatory project in low-income communal housing settings in San Mateo County, CA, as one method for engaging older adults in food and physical activity environment and policy change. Methods and strategies used by the “community action teams” to generate relevant neighborhood environmental data, build coalitions, prioritize complex issues, and advocate for change are presented. Advocacy groups are feasible among older adults to improve food and physical activity environments.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by a Clinical Translational Science Award Seed Grant awarded through the Stanford University Office of Community Health (PI: King). Drs. Buman and Hekler were supported by the US Public Health Service grant 5T32HL007034 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Dr. Otten was supported by a Nutrilite Training Grant. We thank Dominique Cohen; Katherine Dotter, RD; Jill Evans, MPH; Laura O’Donohue; Ami Patel; Kevin Pieretti; Rhonda McClinton-Brown, MPH; Alicia Salvatore, PhD; and Marilyn Winkleby, PhD for their assistance in conducting the NEAAT project. We thank the residents of the two community housing settings who participated in this project.

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

    Matthew P Buman PhD, Sandra J Winter PhD, Eric B Hekler PhD, Jennifer J Otten PhD & Abby C King PhD

  2. School of Nutrition and Health Promotion, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

    Matthew P Buman PhD & Eric B Hekler PhD

  3. Health Policy and Planning, San Mateo County Health System, San Mateo, CA, USA

    Cathleen Baker MPP

  4. Department of Health Research and Policy, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

    Abby C King PhD

Authors
  1. Matthew P Buman PhD
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  2. Sandra J Winter PhD
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  3. Cathleen Baker MPP
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  4. Eric B Hekler PhD
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  5. Jennifer J Otten PhD
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  6. Abby C King PhD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matthew P Buman PhD.

Additional information

Implications

Practice: Older adults are an important source of social capital, and it is feasible to actively engage this population in policy-related activities that improve local food and physical activity environments.

Policy: Older adults represent a relatively untapped resource for collecting community-focused data about food and physical activity environments and could help generate community-focused solutions to inform policy decisions about local food and physical activity environments.

Research: As participatory research methods expand into the food and physical activity environment fields, valid and reliable tools that can readily be used by community members are needed to assess neighborhood environments.

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Buman, M.P., Winter, S.J., Baker, C. et al. Neighborhood Eating and Activity Advocacy Teams (NEAAT): engaging older adults in policy activities to improve food and physical environments. Behav. Med. Pract. Policy Res. 2, 249–253 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13142-011-0100-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13142-011-0100-9

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