{"id":53163,"date":"2018-10-23T11:05:23","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T18:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=53163"},"modified":"2018-10-23T11:11:22","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T18:11:22","slug":"unhealthy-food-tax-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/unhealthy-food-tax-study\/","title":{"rendered":"New $1.4 million grant supports NAU-Navajo Nation Tribal Epidemiology Center impact study of \u2018unhealthy food\u2019 tax"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Healthy Din\u00e9 Nation Act (HDNA) was signed into law in 2014, mandating a 2 percent tax on all \u201cfoods of little-to-no-nutritious value\u201d purchased in Navajo Nation retail stores. The law was designed to promote health and combat high rates of overweight and obesity\u2014along with diseases such as heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. The tax applies to high-fat baked goods and high-sugar items with little or no nutritional value, including sweetened beverages, chips, candy, frozen desserts, pastries and fried foods.<\/p>\n

In 2017, a team of officials from the Navajo Tribal Epidemiology Center (NTEC) and the Navajo Nation collaborated with faculty members of Northern Arizona University\u2019s Department of Health Sciences<\/a>\u2014professor\u00a0Tim Behrens<\/strong>, associate professor\u00a0Dirk de Heer<\/strong>\u00a0and associate professor\u00a0Priscilla<\/strong>\u00a0R.<\/strong> Sanderson<\/strong>\u2014to study the implementation of the tax. Leadership from the Navajo Nation included NTEC director Ramona Antone-Nez and epidemiologist Del Yazzie; Shirleen Jumbo-Rintila, legislative specialist from the Navajo Division of Community Development; Martin Ashley, executive director of the Office of the Navajo Tax Commission; Herbert Benally from Din\u00e9 College; and Moroni Benally, <\/strong>vice president for Government Affairs and Public Relations at Din\u00e9 College. Representatives from several chapters on the Navajo Nation and Kristen Tallis<\/strong>, a student in NAU\u2019s new Master of Public Health<\/a> program, also served as key contributors to the project.<\/p>\n

During this initial one-year study, which was funded through a $225,000 grant from the\u00a0Robert Wood Johnson Foundation<\/a>\u00a0(RWJF),\u00a0the team gathered data to understand how the funds were collected, distributed to tribal chapters and invested to improve the health of tribal members.<\/p>\n

Grant funds new four-year project to determine impact of HDNA<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Now, with a new $1.4 million R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health\u2019s National Institute on\u00a0Minority Health and Health Disparities, the team will embark on a four-year project to determine the impact of the HDNA.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will build on the work we started during the original project expanding this project with new collaborators and new data to gain insight into chapter wellness projects funded by the tax, the food store environment and nutrition-related health behavior,\u201d de Heer, the principal investigator, said.<\/p>\n

In addition to NAU assistant professor Sean Gregory<\/strong>, NTEC project manager Simental Francisco will join the team. Francisco and the NTEC team led the development and implementation of the Navajo Nation Health Survey, and they will develop a follow-up survey as one of the key tools for gathering data for this project.<\/p>\n

The team will also partner with Sonya Shin, director of Community Outreach and Patient Empowerment (COPE), a community organization located in Gallup, New Mexico, that is affiliated with Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Shin, co-principal investigator of the project, will study the food environment in stores on and around the Navajo Nation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"NAU<\/a>Kerry Bennett | Office of the Vice President for Research
\n(928) 523-5556 | kerry.bennett@nau.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Healthy Din\u00e9 Nation Act (HDNA) was signed into law in 2014, mandating a 2 percent tax on all \u201cfoods of little-to-no-nutritious value\u201d purchased in Navajo Nation retail stores. The law was designed to promote health and combat high rates of overweight and obesity\u2014along with diseases such as heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. The…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":53164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}