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Table 2 CFCR thematic domains, themes, and illustrative quotes from a mixed-methods evaluation of NOPRENa

From: The value of the Nutrition and Obesity Policy Research and Evaluation Network in advancing the evidence base for effective nutrition and obesity policy: assessment using the Consolidated Framework for Collaborative Research

Domains

Themes

Illustrative Quotes

Structure and internal processes

Theme 1: Organizational structure and processes

“… I would just never forget how important it is to…reiterate the history and what this group is and what it can provide…I would just not assume everybody knows what it is and how it works and how it functions”

“Have some sort of an orientation for new(er) members. It's not clear how one gets more involved or integrated.”

Group Composition

Theme 2: Broad representation

“When we built the COVID group, my first call, essentially, was to get the School Nutrition Association on board, because… those were the practical practice people, the people actually serving the kids on the front line.”

Theme 3: Breadth of Active Membership

“.. there's been a lot of really wonderful conversations around this area, but I think there are also a lot of other perspectives from different groups who have historically been marginalized in this space that we can also continue to raise up…”

Group Dynamics

Theme 4: Collaboration climate

“It's the most collaborative group that I've ever encountered, and I've benefited professionally because of that. And I think it can be underappreciated how valuable it is to create this space for collaboration, because we can't solve the really hard problems all by ourselves.”

Social Capital

Theme 5: Relationships

“NOPREN has made it easier to… cement some of those professional collaborations through this more formal connectiveness within this network”

Theme 6: Knowledge sharing

“But just different people coming from different perspectives, whether it's rural or urban, tribal, different regions of the country. Just being able to work on things with a brain trust of people and get a pretty good product moving forward”

Theme 7: Access to resources

“Those COVID specific webinars have been so valuable, really bringing in the cutting-edge information into my public health world. And the newsletter, I can't remember if it's weekly or not…there's COVID resources, there's funding opportunities that are COVID specific and all of that I disseminate out to our member organization.”

Activities that influence or take place within the collaboration

Theme 8: Capacity building

“I think that there are a lot of really stellar leadership candidates out there who are young career, who are students, who are just now getting involved in NOPREN…. Thinking about how to cultivate some of that leadership in a more formal way would be a great opportunity.”

Theme 9: Strategic thinking

“I think that any kind of group that is trying to work on health equity needs to look at itself as a group and see what practices are in place, what are we doing, and what can we do? What can we do to elevate people who are often underrepresented in these fields, and also educate ourselves as a group so that in our personal and professional lives we are promoting health equity to the extent that we can.”

Activities that influence or take place in the community

Theme 10: Building partnerships

“One issue we're currently working on is related to BMI assessment where we were observing challenges with how those [Head Start] programs were measuring BMI and communicating that information to families, which was creating tension between families and the community partner. It was also producing data that is not reliable at the federal level. There was another NOPREN member in Ohio doing the same thing, and then we actually found there was actually a whole slew of NOPREN members doing this, which developed a subcommittee off of ECE [early childhood education].”

Theme 11: External communication

“As an associate professor, I am now going back to school for an MPH on the side because of… the critical need… which is policy and policy implementation and dissemination…. That might be why you're getting that question, because we're being pushed to disseminate policy, but we don't know how.”

“Sometimes it's hard to wade through all of the different topics and all the different research. And then you get onto the key findings and you're like, "Okay. So how do I take this and do this tomorrow at my clinic?"… It's hard to apply those things.”

  1. aTheme definitions can be referenced in The Consolidated Framework for Collaborative Research by Calancie et al.