The CTAHR Children’s Healthy Living (CHL) Program headed by Rachel Novotny (HNFAS) was recognized April 25 by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).
CHL won the Mission Integration of Research, Education, and Extension Award for working across all three of NIFA’s mission areas to produce positive outcomes in agriculture, the environment, communities, or people. The category award was one of three given to lead institutions of NIFA-supported projects that have resulted in exceptional impacts.
The CHL program is designed to partner with remote, underserved, minority populations in the Pacific to increase the region’s capacity to build and sustain a healthy food and physical environment. The goal is to prevent obesity among young children. CHL combines various efforts to train a public health and nutrition workforce; conduct public health and nutrition research; develop a food, nutrition, and physical activity data-management and -evaluation system; and communicate nutrition- and health-related information to the public.
During its Day of Appreciation ceremony, NIFA honored several land-grant university partners with NIFA Partnership Awards for supporting NIFA’s mission to advance agricultural research, education, and outreach to solve societal challenges. These projects exemplify what NIFA Director J. Scott Angle calls “work [that] has significantly made a difference in elevating agriculture and science for the benefit of Americans.”