Program Description

Background:
Children of school age (5-19 years) represent a range of critical stages, both in terms of physical and neurological development. Each of these stages is nutritionally sensitive and thus demands food security that ensures stable access to and availability of a high-quality diet to meet nutritional requirements. Regrettably, in many areas of the US and globally, food/nutritional insecurity prevails due to food systems impacted by a range of environmental challenges. The consequent food insecurity necessitates a range of household-/community-based interventions to address this vulnerable age group. This effort, in turn, requires a set of methodologies to assess needs, relative safety and relevant impacts to inform those responsible for program and policy implementation and evaluation. The challenge facing these communities is a gap in the nature and level of information needed to inform such decisions.

The developing child represents a complex biological system that coexists and is impacted by a variety of   environmental factors (e.g., physical, social/cultural, economic, demographic) – an ecology. Our ability to positively affect a change in this ecology demands a multidisciplinary/multisectoral approach that can address the internal (nutritional, biological, developmental) and external (diet/food system, socio-demographic) environments. Our ability to develop, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of progress to address the unique needs of the critical developmental periods during middle childhood and adolescence demands an integrated and comprehensive approach.

The Biomarkers of Nutrition for Development (BOND) Project began in 2010 as an effort to provide service and support to members of the key user groups involved in the global food/nutrition enterprise from bench scientists involved in basic science, to clinicians providing care and/or conducting research, to those involved in public health surveillance, to those charged with the development, implementation, and evaluation of nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programs/interventions. The BOND platform was further intentionally designed to address the range of issues impacting the domestic and global food and nutrition enterprise.

Objective:
This project will take an ecological approach (i.e., examining the relationships among the developing school-aged child [as a complex biological system] and its interaction with its internal [biological, nutritional, developmental] and external [food/diet, socio-demographic, physical] environments) in order to develop, support, and evaluate efforts to meet nutritional needs and optimize outcomes.

Goal:
To examine the issues of nutritional needs and assessment of school-aged children (5 through 19 years). We will use the existing BOND platform and process to address four core Themes via the constitution of Thematic Working Groups to cover:

1. Biology/nutritional needs as they impact particularly on function and exert effect on key biological systems (e.g., growth, neurodevelopment, endocrinology, reproductive health, etc.)
2. Psycho-social and related environments: impact on cognitive/behavioral development including food choice, eating behavior, and other pertinent outcomes
3. Assessment: what aspects of the child’s internal and external ecologies need to be considered in efforts to evaluate the impact of programs/interventions intended to provide nutritional support to school-aged children.
4. Development of a framework focused on how best to translate and implement current and emerging evidence to inform program, policy, and standards of care to ensure both safety and efficacy of programs to address nutritional needs of school-aged children domestically and globally and how best to inform efforts to measure these impacts.

We intend to plan this effort in phases with the first one described above to include the identification of both what we know about the state of the science addressed by the four Thematic Working Groups and gaps in our knowledge that will inform a detailed research agenda. Phase 2 is intended to be an application and implementation effort to apply what we learn to current efforts to address the needs of school-aged children in terms of surveillance and program effectiveness.