In the context of a General Medical Unit with extensive experience in interdisciplinary bedside rounding and teamwork, CareTV is simple to implement, inexpensive, technically feasible, requires minimal staff training and is acceptable to patients. The results of this pilot study will inform and indicate the feasibility of conducting a larger randomized control trial of the impact of CareTV on patient satisfaction, medication adherence and recall of key information, and primary healthcare provider satisfaction.

We undertook this study knowing that for people throughout the Midwest who live in low-income urban neighborhoods, finding and affording healthy foods continues to be a problem. People with less money are not only forced to spend it on food, but have so limited options for avoiding purchase of foods with high levels of fat, salt, and sugar. A review of the literature shows that very little is known about how mobile food trucks can increase availability and affordability of healthy foods in low-income neighborhoods in the United States. We compared municipal codes regulating mobile food truck operators and evaluated the impact on cities in the Midwest for encouraging a 'culture of health.' We analyzed six Midwest metropolitan areas with the highest proportion of minorities who lived below the poverty level and had mobile food trucks selling provisions in their neighborhoods. We found that developing more incentives for mobile food truck operators to sell healthier food options can contribute to improving health outcomes in low-income neighborhoods.

An after-school obesity prevention program for African American children is proposed in this paper. The prevention program is a behavioral education program designed to facilitate healthy behavior changes in obesity self-care and provide culturally sensitive interventions specifically for obese African American children. The self-care concepts addressed involve: knowledge of obesity, exercise, and nutrition. The culturally sensitive interventions address the problems of low self-esteem, communication, and ineffective family coping. The implementation of the after-school obesity program included four phases: needs assessment, planning and goal setting, implementation, and monitoring for progress. This afterschool education program is designed to promote self-care, family support, and improve the quality of life for obese African American children.

No abstract

For years, we have been interested in understanding the relationship between dietary patterns and diseases, and most recently, we have put efforts toward analyzing the impact of food deserts as they relate to dietary patterns. Unhealthy eating has become an epidemic in low‐income neighborhoods that are considered to be food deserts due to the fact that people are not meeting their recommended daily intake of nutritionally dense foods. Adults should be consuming at least 20 to 35 g of fiber daily, however, many Americans only consume 12 to 17 g of fiber daily at best. Furthermore, as a society, we Americans consume way too much added sugar, saturated fat, and salt. Although there are a number of reasons that unhealthy dietary patterns exist in our society especially in low‐income communities, it is important that we pay particular attention to how food deserts have developed and how they are major contributors to the overall poor health of low‐income Americans. Therefore, the purpose of this is paper is to encourage its audience to rethink how we can implement policies to address the issue of unhealthy dietary patterns by reducing or eliminating food deserts. Specifically, we explore the effect of implementing evidence‐based policies such as nutrition initiatives, corner store initiatives, menu labeling, food assistance programs, and the punitive taxation of sugary beverages and unhealthy foods similar to the punitive taxes placed on tobacco.