Patterns in Vegetable Consumption: Implications for Tailored School Meal Interventions.

BACKGROUND: Vegetable consumption is a challenging behavioral target; consumption rates are below recommended levels and when interventions produce improvements, increases in vegetable consumption are typically a fraction of the change in fruit consumption. We describe vegetable consumption within Ohio school meals and examine how fruit selection, the more popular item, impacts vegetable consumption. METHODS: Fruit and vegetable waste was collected on 11,250 trays from 17 elementary and 16 middle/high schools, using the quarter-waste visualization method. RESULTS: One in 4 students ate at least a one-fourth of a cup of vegetables with their school lunch. Consumption was the highest (30.8%) in elementary school buildings with a majority of regular priced meals. Fruit selection was associated with vegetable consumption (p < .001). Middle/high school students who consumed a fruit were 88% more likely to consume a vegetable as oppose to waste it (95% CI: 1.45-2.42). Fruit selection was also associated with not selecting a vegetable, but the association was of a lower magnitude (odds ratio 1.32; 95% CI: 1.06-1.64). Trends were similar in elementary schools. CONCLUSIONS: Fruit and vegetable consumption should be approached as 2 distinct behaviors with particular attention given to vegetables. Fruit items can be leveraged, though, as a means to encourage vegetable selection.

Willingness to respond for radiologic incidents: a hands-on approach.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention published two Radiological Terrorism Toolkits: Public Health Officials (PHTK) and Emergency Services Clinicians (ESCTK). The study consisted of training public health workers and Medical Reserve Corps volunteers to rate 10 distinct virtual survivors each and route them through a Community Reception Center (CRC) pretraining and post-training. The training's effect on the rater's radiation medical knowledge and willingness to respond (WTR) was also measured. Correctly routed survivors increased from a baseline 3.6-5.3, of 10 survivors per rater for the PHTK, and to 5.7 for the ESCTK (p = 0.000). Medical knowledge increased from a baseline of 50 percent to 66.7 percent for the PHTK (nine raters) and to 71.4 percent for the ESCTK (seven raters) (p = 0.000). WTR regardless of severity increased from 34.8 percent to 54.4 percent for the PHTK (p = 0.046). Odds of correctly routing survivors decreased with perception of confidence (0.569, 95% CI 0.375-0.863), while perceptions of preparedness (2.1, 1.4-3.2) and prior training increased the odds (1.8, 1.05-3.16). When taking into account raters unwillingness to respond, the odds of correctly routing survivors decreased with perceptions of confidence in detector use (0.556, 0.365-0.846), with confidence to process persons through a CRC (0.390, 0.215-0.709), and by training with the ESCTK (0.252, 0.12-0.53), while perceptions of preparedness (18.7, 8.4-41.6), and demonstrated medical knowledge (20, 3.26-122) increased ability to correctly route survivors. These findings support the local use of PHTK training to develop surge capacity for a radiological emergency and suggest the interaction between the level of confidence and medical knowledge be studied further.