Healthy Food Initiative
Partnering with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium to increase healthy foods and beverages through their Campus Healthy Food (CHeF) Project
What we eat and drink impacts our health, but we tend to eat what’s readily available. Making healthy food and beverages available in public places lets families, employees, patients, and children eat healthy, and helps prevent weight gain and diseases like type 2 diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.
From vending machines to cafeterias, food in the workplace can come from a variety of sources. With the average American consuming more than one-third of their calories through foods prepared away from home, organizations across Alaska and the country are realizing that the foods and beverages they offer at their work sites provide a significant opportunity to promote and improve employee health.
We are working with a local community partner, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), to increase the availability and promotion of healthy food and beverage options for staff and patients on the Alaska Native Health Campus in Anchorage. ANTHC is a large employer with more than 3,000 employees and serves over 166,000 Alaska Native and American Indian people living in Alaska. The Campus Healthy Food — or CheF — project is a five-year partnership funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It aims to ensure that patients, their families and all the people who care for them have meal options that meet high standards for nutrition, labeling and marketing.
ANTHC passed a healthy food and beverage policy to create alignment between the foods and beverages served and sold at their facilities and their mission to provide the highest quality health care. In addition to incorporating nutritional standards and behavioral design strategies found in the Food Service Guidelines for Federal Facilities, the policy also:
- Affirms the health benefits of traditional Alaska Native foods,
- Encourages the consumption of locally produced food,
- Limits the amount of sugar-sweetened beverages available, and
- Prioritizes access to chilled, potable water.
The policy was rolled out to staff in August 2021. The CHeF Project is working to create tools and resources that support the policy, including a Healthy Meeting Guide for staff planning events.
Contact
For more information about the Physical Activity and Nutrition (PAN) program’s Healthy Food Initiative, please email: Lauren Kelsey, MPH or call (907) 269-8165.
Webpage updated January 2022
