BackgroundOverweight and obese children are likely to develop serious health problems. Among children in the U.S., Latino children are affected disproportionally by the obesity epidemic. Niños Sanos, Familia Sana (Healthy Children, Healthy Family) is a five-year, multi-faceted intervention study to decrease the rate of BMI growth in Mexican origin children in California’s Central Valley. This paper describes the methodology applied to develop and launch the study.Methods/DesignInvestigators use a community-based participatory research approach to develop a quasi-experimental intervention consisting of four main components including nutrition, physical activity, economic and art-community engagement. Each component’s definition, method of delivery, data collection and evaluation are described. Strategies to maintain engagement of the comparison community are reported as well.DiscussionWe present a study methodology for an obesity prevention intervention in communities with unique environmental conditions due to rural and isolated location, limited infrastructure capacity and limited resources. This combined with numerous cultural considerations and an unstable population with limited exposure to researcher expectations necessitates reassessment and adaptation of recruitment strategies, intervention delivery and data collection methods. Trial registration # NCT01900613.Trial registrationNCT01900613.

carlos francisco jackson SerigrafíaConstructing the Chicana/o imaginary I n 1996, the Chicano printmaker Malaquias Montoya spoke to a group of students at Casa Cuauhtémoc, a theme dorm on the University of California, Davis, campus, where I was a first-year student and resident. Malaquias showed us a photograph of a mural that he had painted in Tijuana for the Festival de la Raza ten years earlier. It had taken only a few days to paint the mural, he said, but much longer than that to learn about the environment, meet with residents in the nearby community, and talk with community leaders, activists, educators, and cultural workers before a drop of paint was put on the wall.Malaquias was a towering figure to Chicana/o students on campus. Later, in a class that I took with him, Malaquias became impassioned when he showed us drawings and prints by Ester Hernandez and Yolanda Lopez. It was powerfully moving to see him humbled by their works. I now understand that this emotion was an expression of respect for artists who dedicate themselves to producing art within the framework of a movement.

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