Former CHL trainee and now Guam EFNEP coordinator Tanisha Franquez Aflague was recently featured in
Fresh From the Field, NIFA’s newsletter highlighting success stories of its grantees, about her work with the Children’s Healthy Living (CHL) Project. One of two trainees selected from Guam to pursue higher education as part of CHL’s effort to build capacity in each jurisdiction, she earned her doctorate and then was hired at the University of Guam, where she serves as faculty for the CHL Network (CHLN) and as a mentor for the Child Health Assessment in the Pacific (CHAP), an extension of CHL. As the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) coordinator, she provides leadership and oversight for the program, including keeping University administration and stakeholders informed about the program and its impacts. Tanisha explains that CHL has increased her knowledge of her community by helping her to understand health disparities and social determinants of health in the Western Pacific and also ways to highlight the strengths of Pacific cultures and traditional practices to frame nutrition education, training, recruitment, and implementation.