New HDF 357 (Family and Community Health) Section 2 offered Fall 2006 through The URI Partnership in Food, Hunger and Nutrition !

• click here for Fall 2006 Interdisciplinary Seminar syllabus/overview

• click here for Fall 2006 Interdisciplinary Seminar schedule and outline

Great interdisciplinary opportunity to learn from professors and students in a variety of majors!!!

Learn about:

Health and Nutrition Issues for Vulnerable Populations Including:
•  Poor Children
•  Families in Poverty
•  Immigrant Families
•  Older Adults
•  Low Income Communities
•  Homeless Children and Families

Health Risks Associated with Poverty including:
•  Coronary Disease
•  Obesity
•  Diabetes
•  Lead Poisoning
•  Hypertension

Clinical and Public Policy Implications of Health Issues Across the Lifespan

Details :

• Class meets Thursdays 4-7
• Open to all majors.   3 units of credit.   Additional credit available for individualized community -based service learning experience.
• Students must be juniors, seniors or have permission of instructor.

Presented by : URI President's Partnership in Food, Hunger and Nutrition
( http://www.uri.edu/fhn )

For more information :   Contact Dr. Phillip Clark, at 874-2689 or aging@uri.edu   or Lorraine Keeney at 874-7441 or lkeeney@uri.edu  

One of the objectives of a planned team-taught graduate seminar will be to enrich undergraduate curriculum across colleges. Through the presentations, conversations, and readings in the graduate seminar, each of the core faculty will be exposed to new information and approaches from other disciplines that can be incorporated into various undergraduate courses.

Further, on a more formal level, we will develop topic-related modules that can be introduced into existing courses that already address aspects of poverty, hunger, food, nutrition and health. These modules will then be refined, expanded and systematically incorporated into new courses, which will be cross-listed to encourage participation in this interdisciplinary endeavor.

A second educational objective of the FHN Partnership will be to further strengthen and promote the minor in Hunger Studies. This approved minor is supported by several courses in Nutrition and Food Sciences, Human Development, HSS, Political Science, and Community Planning and Development.

We anticipate modifying the electives in the minor to include additional courses, such as NUR 443, Community Health Nursing, to add breadth to coursework of the minor and ensure consistency with the goals of the Partnership.

Sociology 300: International Perspectives on Poverty. is another course which could potentially be included in the minor. The course examines poverty internationally from a sociological perspective. Topics which will be discussed are the causes and correlates of poverty, the impact of poverty on women and children, and health issues, such as HIV/AIDS, that are related to poverty. The course will address the social and political factors in developing regions of the world that may affect poverty, as well as international efforts to both decrease poverty and enhance economic development in a sustainable way. For further information, contact Instructor Jill Harrison.

In addition, we will be able to expand the existing 3-credit internships to include a wider range of paid and unpaid internship experiences. The minor will provide a framework for undergraduate students to integrate their discipline-focused learning (major) into an interdisciplinary framework. In this way, students from complementary majors will take courses together, as well as engage in community-based research and outreach organized by interdisciplinary teams of faculty and graduate students.

At both the undergraduate and graduate levels, there is a need to provide exposure to, and develop expertise in the policy arena. During the Spring 2004 semester, an independent study course (PSC 375) was offered on Advocacy and Social Policy with a focus on poverty-related issues. This course has the potential for both graduate and undergraduate components and with a content focus on policies issues related to food, hunger and nutrition. Partnership faculty bring great expertise to the policy domain, and thus will avail multiple opportunities for students to engage in policy-related activities. For example, research on barriers to Food Stamp Program participation demonstrated that having a car frequently reduced one’s eligibility for participation. Due in part to advocacy efforts involving the Feinstein Hunger Center during the 2003 legislative session, the eligibility criteria were changed (effective 1/04) by eliminating the value of automobile when determining eligibility and therefore increasing access to program benefits. Graduate students in Nutrition and Food Sciences have worked directly with Food Stamp Administrators in Rhode Island to develop an electronic eligibility-screening tool that eliminates paper pre-screening in community settings by using laptop computers operated by nutrition students working on Food Stamp outreach projects. These types of opportunities for system changes and policy/procedural engagement include participation in hearings, providing testimony, collaborating with state and advocacy agencies and conducting research on specific topics.

Also timely is the current national debate on the effects of non-nutritious foods and beverages now offered in our schools. While some states, towns and schools boards have instituted changes in their local policies on offering non-nutritious foods in schools, Rhode Island has only recently joined in the discussion. URI students and faculty will be well positioned to provide a valuable service to local and state policy makers by conducting research and developing policy recommendations to address these and other concerns. Using real-time situations to illustrate policy development and refinement, students and faculty will be able to develop skills both in and out of the classroom around a multitude of issues.

For example, URI freshmen in Dean Jeffrey Seeman’s URI 101 class will find out about poverty and hunger, see what URI is doing to help address the problems and put in some sweat equity themselves.

This September, over one-hundred sixty hours will be contributed by these URI freshmen who will pitch in and help harvest apples from one of three URI gardens serving the state’s homeless population. Nancy Fey-Yensan, an assistant professor of Nutrition and Food Sciences will offer the students a seminar examining their own nutritional needs and describing food issues facing other Rhode Islanders, Americans and those in the broader global community.

This project is just one of over a score of yearly service learning projects at URI. Every URI freshman is required to enroll in URI 101, Traditions and Transformations, a seminar including community service supported by the Feinstein Enriching American Program.