The second annual Food Day, the nationwide celebration of healthy, affordable, and sustainably produced food, is just months away. Food Day is October 24 every year.

Food Day brings together organizations and individuals working on food issues as varied as hunger, nutrition, agriculture policy, animal welfare, and farmworker justice. Last year, some events were large in scale, such as a Times Square Eat In, attended by celebrities, chefs, and prominent food activists, but small scale efforts make a difference, too! Check out this video for a closer look.

Food Day will reach millions of Americans through events on college campuses, schools, houses of worship, and even restaurants. But Food Day can also be celebrated by simple, solitary acts of personal responsibility, such as stopping drinking soda or other sugar-based drinks, or forgoing fast-food in favor of a healthy, brown-bag lunch. Organizers welcome restaurants, manufacturers, growers, and other food companies to consider using Food Day to announce changes that benefit the health of consumers, employees, farm animals, or the environment.

With Food Day 2012 approaching, how will you participate?

Last week in Austin, TX was an amazing time at South by Southwest (SXSW). Apart from catching up with colleagues and friends that I don’t usually get to see on a regular basis, I just felt more apart of the “what’s around the corner” vibe that originally brought me to the event.

This was partly due to the fact that I had a great time during my panel session and meeting great people interested in taking innovative concepts from the developing world and making them useful as solutions here in the States (reverse innovation). In a recent post I shared some resources from past SXSW events and here I’ll be outlining things mentioned during the panel session. Another big thanks for the folks who came out to listen to me and my panel teammates on this concept.

Panelists:

In addition to myself (and good grief was I in awesome company..) -

Jaspal Sandhu (@jaspaldesign): Faculty @ Berkley’s School of Public Health | Making technology meaningful as Partner @ Gobee Group

Jose Gomez-Marquez (@jfgm): Maker of Little Devices for DIY Global Health | 2009 Technology Review Humanitarian of the Year

Resources Mentioned During Panel:

• NextDrop
• OpenMRS
• Mpesa (mobile banking)
• Noted Schools of Global/Public Health (Emory, Duke, UNC, UMD)
• Salt Lake Valley Health Department interview (from here at Pulse + Signal blog) Part 1 | Part 2
• Instructables
• CodeAcademy
• Medic Mobile
• Knight Foundation News Challenge
• Sustain or Die: The Rise of Public Health 2.0
• Medik
• FastForward Health Film Festival (which I am co-founder)
• Ushahidi
• Uber (example of disruptive idea in public transportation)
• Drishtee (the Acumen Fund example I mentioned re: kiosks & democratizing innovation)

Hopefully the podcast that was recorded during our session will be up on the SXSW website soon and I will be sharing that as well with an update to this post. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or more comments!

If you’ve ever smoked, and tried to quit, chances are you know how much fun quitting, and quit attempts, aren’t. The cravings, the mood swings, the weight gain – ugh! What if quitting smoking was fun instead?

Game Mode: Relax

Funded by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Program grant, Lit2Quit is a mobile game that aims to help smokers reduce or quit smoking. This promising technology is being developed and studied by a group of researchers, developers, and health professionals at Teachers College at Columbia University. I caught up recently with Azadeh Jamalian, a Ph.D student at Teachers College, and one of the lead researchers and developers on the Lit2Quit initiative. She graciously agreed to answer my many questions, and share them with Pulse + Signal readers.

BC: Lit2Quit attempts to match the effects of smoking through game play, either relaxation or receiving a “rush” – are there really only two states in which a smoker may find themselves?

AJ: Yes, research shows that smokers perceive smoking as a sedative or stimulating experience depending on their state of mind (Donovan & Marlatt, 2007). However, there may be different motives for smoking. According to Kassel, Paronis, & Stroud (2003), the most commonly reported motive is stress reduction (hence, perceived sedative effects of nicotine); other cited motives include perceived stimulant effect of smoking (specially when drinking), socialization, addiction, habit, and sensorimotor aspects of smoking (see Donovan & Marlatt, 2007).

In addition, research shows that nicotine enhances memory and focuses attention (Hahn, Ross, Yang, Kim, Huestis, & Stein, 2007; Lawrence, Ross, & Stein, 2002, Vossel, Warbrick, Mobascher, Winterer, & Fink, 2011). Although you cannot target everything in a single project, and different products may be suitable for different people, we tried to have all these motives in mind when designing Lit2Quit.

Game Mode: Rush

Mirroring the perceived stimulating and sedating effects of nicotine, Lit2Quit is designed in two modes, RUSH and RELAX. These modes use specific breath patterns and game design challenges to excite or relax the player. Depending on his/her state of mind, the player chooses which mode he/she wishes to play. For the future releases of the game, we are planning to integrate social aspects in which players could collaborate and play together, or they can invite their friends to see the world they created. In addition, we believe that since the players control both versions of the game with their breath, the gameplay mimics the behavior of smoking and help smokers to control their urge through engagement of their sensorimotor habits. Further, to enhance player’s attention and memory, the players need to memorize certain patterns to succeed in the higher levels of the game.

BC: The aim of Lit2Quit is smoking reduction through replacement of the stimulus with game play. Can you say more about how this plays out? In other words, are participants switching “cold turkey” to Lit2Quit, or is there a gradual change over time?

AJ: The aim of Lit2Quit is smoking reduction through replacement of the stimulus with game play. Since we haven’t done any field studies yet, we cannot know for sure how smoking behavior changes as the result of the gameplay. However, our hypothesis is that the game will help smokers to gradually reduce their smoking over time, as they become more expert in the gameplay, and hence can perform the advanced breath patterns in the game more successfully. Our initial studies have shown that these advanced breath patterns more closely mimics the perceived and physiological effects of nicotine.

BC: Are there preliminary data you can share with us yet?

AJ: We have compared the physiological and perceived emotional effects of gameplay to smoking through various measurements such as Self-Assessment- Manikin (SAM) survey, Electroencephalography (EEG), electrocardiography (EKG), and skin conductance (SC). Although smoking is perceived as either a stimulant or sedative, physiologically it stimulates the body. Therefore, in order to compare effects of playing the game to smoking, we analyzed both perceived and physiological effects. Overall, results show that on average subjects perceive playing either modes of the game as an enjoyable experience, and that Lit2Quit partially mimics perceived and physiological effects of smoking. We also learned that since breath is a novel game mechanic (as evidenced by the fact that in 100+ subjects, none of them had experience using their breath as a control mechanic for a mobile game), the initial difficulty levels of the game should be set low to allow players to grasp how to play the game using their breath.

At this stage of the project, we don’t have behavior change data to share. Efficacy trials are the next contemplated step for the project pending funding.

BC: After learning about the game, I wondered if the game is able to match the effects of smoking, is there any danger of addiction to the video game?

AJ: Your question reminds me of a recent article, “Saving Education Through Games Addiction.” I personally like the possibility of “saving health through game addiction!”

BC: What else should we know about the Lit2Quit research?

AJ: We have successfully finished the first stage of the project and are publishing our results in tandem with providing peer review opportunities at presentations at notable gaming and health care conferences. Our plan is to enrich the design of the game by adding a layer of social and community aspects to the game as well as explore platform agnosticism and body sensor networking for input monitoring. Most critical to the game’s success and impact are new collaboration and partnership opportunities with developers,
nonprofit foundations, educational institutions and industry. In particular, we are in the process of designing efficacy trials to study short-term and long-term patterns of smoking behavior change as the result of gameplay intervention. You could follow our progress and contact us via our Facebook page or www.Lit2Quit.com.

BC: Do you think Lit2Quit could be played for any other purposes aside from smoking reduction?

AJ: Yes! The game is fun to play and in fact anyone could enjoy playing the game without even knowing that it’s a smoking reduction game. In addition, since there is no direct reference to smoking in the game, the Relax mode in particular could be played for any type of stress reduction. if you gain expertise in the “Relax” version of the game you could train yourself to self-relax through meditative breathing patterns, and therefore self-monitor your stress through breathing slower than your usual rate. The game has other health benefits. It could be used in clinics for treating asthma and chronic inflammatory diseases of the airways.

–

To learn more about Lit2Quit watch this video:

Lit2Quit Video by Advance from Dan Rabinowitz on Vimeo.

Bridgette

Bridgette Collado, MA, RD, is a health communication consultant and registered dietitian, and a contributor to Pulse + Signal. Follow Bridgette on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bcollado.

References:
Donovan, D.M. & Marlatt, G.A. (Eds.). (2007). Assessment of addictive behavior (2nd ed.), The Guilford Press.

Hahn, B., Ross, T.J., Yang, Y., Kim, I., Huestis, M.A, Stein, E.A. (2007). Nicotine enhances visuospatial attention by deactivating areas of the resting brain default network. Journal of  Neuroscience, 27, 3477?3489.

Kassel, J.D., Stroud, L.R., & Paronis, C.A. (2003). Smoking, stress, and negative affect: Correlation, causation, and context across stages of smoking. Psychological Bulletin, 129(2), 270-304.

Lawrence, N.S., Ross, T.J., Stein, E.A., (2002). Cognitive mechanisms of nicotine on visual attention. Neuron, 36 (3), 24, 539?548.

Vossel, S., Warbrick, T., Mobascher, A. Winterer, G. , & Fink, G.R. (2011). Spatial and sustained attention in relation to smoking status: behavioural performance and brain activation patterns, Journal of Psychopharmacology, 25(11) 1485?1495.

The American Public Health Association recently launched a competition that gives health departments the opportunity to improve their capacity around health inequality policies. What’s up for grabs? Certainly nothing to yawn at (especially in this economic climate):

According to the APHA site announcing the policy innovation contest:

Between five and eight health departments will receive awards ranging from $25,000 to $40,000 to develop, implement, and/or evaluate an innovative policy approach to a critical public health problem, with a focus on reducing health inequities and building policy capacity.

I’m happy to see that the CDC is involved in providing funding for the initiative – in some upcoming posts, this will become clearer on where I’m thinking the role of organizations like the CDC will be most helpful to move innovation in public health.

Today celebrates the first annual national Food Day. I caught up with Lilia Smelkova, Campaign Manager with Food Day,  to get the full scoop…

What is Food Day?

Food Day is a national grassroots campaign for healthy, affordable food produced in humane, sustainable and just way.  Food Day is modeled after Earth Day, and will take place anually on October 24 with people across the country celebrating by organizing or attending events, big and small–on college campuses, at schools, in public parks, at farmers markets. Major themes include health, sustainable agriculture, cutting subsidies to agribusiness, and eradicating food deserts. Food Day aims to educate the general public, influence local and state food policies, and give a platform for diverse to dialogue and work together. But more important, Food Day aims to inspire Americans to change their diets for the better and start cooking for families again.

After months of organizing by countless people, there will be more than 2,000 events from coast to coast in 50 states on and around October 24.  Local governments are seizing the opportunity to announce new food policy initiatives. The National Archives will be hosting a Food Day Open House, and there will be an “Eat In” in Times Square in New York, with guests Morgan Spurlock, Marion Nestle, and 50 other food leaders and community activists. You can learn more about Food Day priorities and look for events around the country here: www.foodday.org.

What is the significance of October 24th?

We wanted to select a date that would give some time for schools and campuses to organize activities, not too close to Earth Day, to give a possibility for organizers to participate and leave time to plan, and also be close to the World Food Day, one of our partners, celebrating with actions on world hunger issues and addressing domestic food access.

Dozens of school districts and hundreds of campuses are celebrating countrywide. Portland Public Schools will serve a special meal of locally-raised, grass-fed beef and unlimited fruits and vegetables  for kids from 30,000 families. Every school in Denver will have a special Food Day menu. Schools in Boston, Boulder County, Los Angeles, and Detroit will celebrate as well. The Real Food Challenge has involved more than 200 college campuses in dinning hall events, teach-ins, conferences, picnics and more.

How did the Food Day folks settle on the 6 Food Day principles?

Food Day’s goal is nothing less than to transform the American diet—to inspire a broad movement involving people from every walk of life. In other words, we want America to eat real. The 6 Food Day principles were selected to give a broad umbrella, a platform for groups working on all aspects of food system to collaborate together, public health advocates, environmental activists and farm workers justice movement. We have based the selection on a survey made earlier this year when we asked thousands of respondents, including our advisory board members, what were the priorities that wanted to see addressed by Food Day.

Food Day’s 6 principles are:

What can our readers do today to participate in Food Day?

First of all, attend a Food Day event. If you haven’t found a Food Day event near you, visit FoodDay.org to search by our map or by typing in your zip code. (Be patient as events take time to load in the map—a lot of people are visiting right now!). Besides events in public places, Food Day events will take place at homes.  For inspiration, we are offering a free Food Day recipe booklet featuring recipes from Mario Batali, Rick Bayless, Emeril Lagasse, Nina Simonds, and other renown chefs.

If you want to create your own Food Day event at home with family or friends, there is still time. We have a great dinner party kit collection of totally delicious recipes from celebrity chefs to get you started. If you want to raise money for a local food-related charity, you can enter a contest led by Epicurious.com—winning entries will get their donations matched up to $1,000! We even have tips for Halloween, and Food Day pumpkin carving stencils. We encourage everyone to sign the Food Day petition asking Congress for better food policies.

And of course you can keep up with Food Day by liking it on Facebook, following CSPI on Twitter, or by using the #FoodDay hashtag.

What can we expect from Food Day in the coming years?

Food Day will be October 24—this year and in years to come. Food Day aims to become for the Food Movement what Earth Day has been for the Environmental Movement, bringing food education into school curriculum, helping to improve diets, and giving the much needed support to sustainable agriculture.  Food Day will inspire hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans to change their diets for the better, and to push for improved food policies. Although with Food Day, actively making change – even for one day – can have a tremendous impact, we also see efforts on improving policies. Rhode Island and Montgomery County, Maryland are announcing the formation of the food policy councils on Food Day. In California, dozens of nonprofit organizations have come together to promote a petition campaign to generate support for a smarter Farm Bill.

–

Bridgette Collado (aka, @bcollado)

Lilia Smelkova worked for Slow Food International in Italy for 10 years and initiated the Slow Food network in Eastern and Central Europe and Canada. She supervised international communications and directed the launch of an international education program that birthed the first European network of sustainable school cafeterias. She also worked on the core team that planned the first Terra Madre, a meeting of food communities from 150 countries. Lilia holds a BA from Minsk Linguistics University in Belarus (she is fluent in Italian, Russian, English, French, and Spanish), a Master’s in languages from Turin University in Italy, and a certificate in environmental management from UC Berkeley, where she co-authored a nutrition education study. She recently guided an expedition of Italian scientists along the Silk Road to research food preferences and genetics. She believes that food is among the best ways to experience the world, especially Uzbek pilaf, Pamir mountain mulberries, and Transylvanian jams.

The following is a guest post from Douglas Naegele, President at Infield Health – a mobile health company based in Washington, DC.  Doug recounts his experience as an invited attendee at the very first Twitter inspired Let’s Move event. You can follow Doug on Twitter as @textandshout

I recently had the pleasure of attending the first Tweetup surrounding Michele Obama’s Let’s Move initiative.  The White House hosted the event, and tied it to a harvest of the White House garden by two DC elementary schools.

Before the harvest, 15 followers of @LetsMove gathered on the South Lawn to meet one another and hear from Let’s Move Executive Director Dr. Judith Palfrey.  She outlined the vision for Let’s Move in 2012:  Making exercise and play a regular part of each child’s day…every day.  In addition, she outlined efforts surrounding food labeling and partnering with food manufacturers to provide healthy alternatives to families.  In the end, all agreed that real decision-making happens at the parent-child level, and it was everyone’s responsibility to support healthy options.

White House Chef Sam Kass gave a tour of the garden, pointing out produce consumed by the First Family.  In addition, much of the crop is donated to local school lunch programs and local shelters.  White House Beekeeper Charlie Brandt explained how his nearby beehive provides honey for the kitchen and pollination for the garden.

The Let’s Move Tweetup is part of the White House’s larger initiative on reaching out to, and bringing in, Twitter followers.  Previous WH Tweetups centered around “Ask the Press Secretary” and “Ask the President” at a Maryland Town Hall.  On October 13, it hosted a Tweetup surrounding the state visit of President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea.

See photos and tweets from the event here:  http://bit.ly/qj0X9k

This month, Harvard took a bold stand, declaring the USDA‘s food guide icons inadequate and out-of-date:

For nearly two decades, the U.S. government distilled its nutrition advice into pyramids. These efforts didn’t accurately show people what makes up a healthy diet. Why? Their recommendations were based on out-of-date science and influenced by people with business interests in the messages the icons sent. This year, the U.S. government scrapped its MyPyramid icon in favor of the fruit-and-vegetable rich MyPlate—an improvement, yet one that still doesn’t go far enough to show people how to make the healthiest choices.

Researchers in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, in conjunction with Harvard Health Publications, are now offering alternative icons to MyPyramid and MyPlate.

Harvard’s Healthy Eating Plate adds emphasis on healthy fats and water, mentioning that diary should be limited to 1-2 servings per day. Physical activity is also a part of each of Harvard’s graphics. Read a comprehensive comparison of the icons here.

While the Healthy Eating Plate addresses some of the shortcomings of the USDA’s MyPlate, it’s been criticized as being too “nutritionally annoying“.  Harvard’s Healthy Eating Plate may be too text heavy for some, and unrealistic for others, putting in place barriers to behavior change.

Neither are perfect. Nutrition is complex. Without greater education and support from nutrition professionals in our schools, health care system, and communities, simple guides to healthy eating alone won’t cut it in our struggle to realize a healthier nation.

At the expo today at the Games for Health conference, I caught Bill Sabram talking about his very cool (very big!) Monumental poster. After fighting the crowd waiting to talk with him, I caught this short video clip about the game. Take a look…

Want more from the Games for Health conference? Follow me at @bcollado and search for the hashtag #G4H11.

-Bridgette

Have you noticed images like the one to the right sprouting up at every turn? I have. That, my dear readers, is a QR code, and it’s one trendy, useful piece of technology.

These 2-dimensional codes were developed by Denso Wave, a manufacturer of automatic data capture technology, and released to the market in 1994. QR stands for “quick response” and these symbols can serve up a large amount of data with a swift scan. They stand up to more dirt and damage than traditional codes with error-correction encoding. They are omni-directional (i.e. they can be read from any angle). One QR code can store 16 individual codes. And, they are able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Well, perhaps not that last one. If you’re interested in a few stats on this subject, head over to Social Wayne’s blog and check out his post on the subject, complete with infographic.

To read a QR code, a scanner must be installed on your mobile phone (your phone must also have a camera). A number of scanners are available free for download. Examples of types of data that can be stored in a QR code are:

• Phone number
• Email address
• Contact information in the form of a virtual business card
• Event details
• URL
• Geo location
• Simple text
• SMS (pre-populates the number and message)
• MMS
• WiFi configuration

This list is by no means exhaustive and clever programmers are expanding the utility of QR codes rapidly. After reading this list, are you also contemplating the ways we can leverage this technology in the public health realm? Curious about how this channel is being used, if at all, by healthcare and public health professionals, I scoured the internet for examples, and when few turned up, I put out a call via Twitter with some success.

Condensing member information on health insurance forms: Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Blue Cross Blue Shield Excellus is now incorporating a QR Code that directs people to learn more or obtain more of their information via QR Code. Because a QR Code can take half of the information that previous required multiple print pages and consolidate it to a singe sheet or two they are realizing a savings on their printing costs.

Driving traffic to a mobile Website:  Takeda Pharmaceuticals.

Takeda Pharmaceuticals points readers of a Uloric (gout medication) advertisement to a mobile Website.

Opt-in for reminders:  American Cancer Society.

The American Cancer Society leveraged QR code technology to drive users to a highly targeted mobile Website allowing users to sign-up for reminders about their breast cancer walk, send alerts to friends and donate to their cause.

Driving traffic to a mobile app:  Curatio CME Institute.

Curatio used the bar code to the left to drive clinicians to a mobile application of their Clinical Educator pocket tool. They used an other code on the front panel of a hematology symposium program book so participating physicians could access the Power Point slides on their mobile device.

QR Codes as an Assistive Technology

Digit-Eyes is an iPhone 3G app for the blind and visually impaired community. It makes text or audio QR Code labels you can read with your iPhone.

My hope is to see more and varied uses of QR code technology in the public health space in the near future. If you know of other examples, please tell me about them in the comments! Would also love your thoughts on how you can imagine how these lovely little codes could be leveraged for improvement of public health.

Leading creative/advertising blog, Osocio, is conducting it’s annual awards event for top socially conscious campaigns of 2010 that were featured on the site. Many of you may remember Pulse + Signal guest author – Marc van Gurp, who posted content for Spread the Word Sundays last year.

Here’s an excerpt on why it’s happening:

Because we want to put the most creative and innovative social ads in the spotlight, so that non-profit organizations can learn and benefit from these best practices.

We don’t intend to compete with big advertising festivals. Our aim is to award grassroots initiatives and advertising campaigns that try to solve real-life problems. Let’s not forget that Osocio is the place where advertising and activism collide.

This is one of my favorites looking at car safety and the importance of wearing your seatbelt:

Make sure and check out the rest of the campaigns!