A benchmark system to optimize our defense against an attack on the US food supply using the Risk Reduction Effectiveness and Capabilities Assessment Program.

The United States Food Supply Is Not Consistent with Dietary Guidance: Evidence from an Evaluation Using the Healthy Eating Index-2010

Future Trends and the Pace of Change: Are We Ready?: The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an undeniable case for change. Life, work and organizations will never be “back to normal.” This opens up massive opportunities to raise our awareness of future trends and to elevate our profession, build resilience, increase our influence and visibility, and infuse futuristic competencies into our

The increasing frequency and severity of disasters worldwide needs effective disaster management training to enhance the preparedness and response capabilities of emergency responders. This study compares the outcomes of tabletop exercises (TTEs) and full-scale exercises (FSEs) in training senior paramedic students at Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz College for Emergency Medical Services, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A nonequivalent two-group quasi-experimental design was used. Forty-five senior paramedic students who had completed a disaster management course were randomly assigned to either TTE or FSE groups. Both groups participated in a simulated multi-vehicle accident scenario. Data were collected using an adapted CLUT Scale survey, which measured learning, trust, and usefulness immediately after the exercises. The Mann-Whitney U test was applied to compare outcomes between the 2 groups. Both TTE and FSE resulted in high levels of perceived learning, trust, and usefulness among participants, indicating a positive impact on disaster preparedness. While the TTE group scored slightly higher on average across all variables, these differences were not statistically significant, suggesting that both exercise types are similarly effective. The findings underscore the cost-effectiveness of TTEs and their potential to foster collaborative learning environments. Both TTE and FSE are effective in enhancing disaster preparedness among senior paramedic students. Given their adaptability and cost-effectiveness, TTEs may be particularly valuable for resource-constrained training settings. Further research with larger, more diverse samples and pre-/post-intervention assessments is recommended to validate these findings and improve disaster management training programs.

Introduction:In a disaster or mass casualty incident, the Emergency Department (ED) charge nurse is thrust into an expanded leadership role, expected to not only manage the department but also organize a disaster response. Hospital emergency preparedness training programs typically focus on high-level leadership, while frontline decision-making staff get experience only through online training and infrequent full-scale exercises. Financial and time limitations of full-scale exercises have been identified as major barriers to frontline training.Aim:To discuss a cost-effective approach to training ED charge nurses and informal leaders in disaster response.Methods:A formal training program was implemented in the ED. All permanent and relief charge nurses are required to attend one four-hour Hospital ICS course within their first year in their position, as well as participate in a minimum of one two-hour ED-based tabletop exercise per year. The tabletop exercises are offered bimonthly, covering various mass casualty scenarios such as apartment complex fires, riots, and a tornado strike. Full-scale exercises involving the ED occur annually.Results:ED permanent and relief charge nurses expressed increased skills and knowledge in areas such as initiation of disaster processes, implementation of hospital incident command, and familiarization with protocols and available resources. Furthermore, ED charge nurses have demonstrated strong leadership, decision-making, and improved response to actual mass casualty incidents since implementing ICS training and tabletop exercises.Discussion:Limitations of relying on full-scale disaster exercises to provide experience to frontline leaders can be overcome by the inclusion of ICS training and tabletop exercises for ED charge nurses in a hospital training and exercise plan. Implementing a structured training program for ED charge nurses focusing on leadership in mass casualty incidents is one step to building a more resilient and prepared ED, hospital, and community.

The global community is facing escalating acute food insecurity crises, predominantly in Sub- Saharan Africa, due to climate change, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and COVID-19 shocks. Related impacts on donor government budgets, domestic conflicts and limited fiscal capacity in countries already experiencing acute food insecurity, often on top of high chronic food insecurity levels, further exacerbate the issue. This policy brief examines the potential of private sector financing to alleviate acute food insecurity, through providing a targeted review of key mechanisms for mobilizing private sector investment in priority regions affected by acute food insecurity. These mechanisms include (1) donor-private sector partnerships, (2) private sector industry initiatives, and (3) standalone investors and institutions. They have been analysed through case studies and stakeholder consultations, to offer insights into the potential of private sector investment to address acute food insecurity challenges. The analysis emphasizes the role of private sector commercial investment, including short-term investments in addressing immediate food supply needs and medium- to long-term investments in enhancing the resilience of local food systems, focusing on geographies experiencing Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Acute Food Insecurity Phases 2 and 3.1 These are acute food insecurity contexts where the private sector might still perceive a viable investment opportunity and where such investments can contribute to building more resilient food systems. Based on this initial review of mechanisms to mobilize private sector financing, the brief concludes that private sector financing has a role to play in building the resilience of medium-term food systems in order to prevent future emergencies, but that it is not suitable for addressing short-term, urgent financing needs related to acute food insecurity that is at crisis levels or near to them. Private sector investors also need significant de-risking and blended finance in countries that are most affected by acute food insecurity, as well as policy predictability and demonstrated national commitments to domestic and regional food and agriculture strategies, due to the long timeframes of, and risks for, most agricultural investments. This indicates that substantial additional donor and public sector intervention is needed to catalyse private sector investment and to direct it towards investments that will have the biggest impact on food security. Learnings from the case studies and other documents reviewed for this policy brief, along with interviews with a range of sectoral stakeholders, indicate that initiatives to mobilize private sector investment should prioritize two objectives so as to achieve the most food security impact. These will shift countries that are experiencing acute food insecurity away from exporting unprocessed agricultural production and importing consumable food and towards national and regional processing and value addition for local consumption. First, focus efforts on catalysing private investment in local agricultural processing and value addition. The missing value chain link in many acutely food-insecure countries is local processing and value addition capacity, which would also provide local off-take for domestic agricultural production. Many initiatives to date have not focused on this piece of the equation, but rather on access to inputs and smallholder farmer support. Second, leverage blended financing to mobilize local financial institutional lending to processing and value addition SMEs. Local currency lending is often the type of financing that agricultural SMEs most need: SME financing needs are not well-matched with the types of foreign currency investment that development finance institutions (DFIs) and other international investors offer, especially with regard to ticket size and return expectations. This brief also recognizes the limitations of its approach and the complexity of the dynamics around using private sector investment to alleviate acute food insecurity. Therefore, the brief concludes by highlighting critical questions for further research, including the positioning of smallholder engagement for food security, innovation in blended financing instruments, and enabling trade and agricultural policy frameworks.

Registered Dietitian Nutritionists' Perceptions of the Relationship between Food and Peace in the United States Food System: A Qualitative Study.

This article examines the issues arising from student placements in the private or commercial sector. It focuses on private residential care for adults, as the most developed area of private provision in the UK, and explores the background to this form of provision. The article then considers the private sector placement from the viewpoints of the student, the private sector agency and the educational institution. A checklist for social work educators considering placements in the private sector draws together some of the key issues. The article ends with a discussion of the pragmatic, moral, logistic and educational perspectives which influence attitudes towards the private sector.

Ultraprocessed foods (UPF), hyper-palatable foods (HPF), and high energy density (HED) foods may contribute to obesity risk. All have distinct definitions; however, it is unknown the degree to which they may identify overlapping or distinct foods. This study examined the availability of UPF, HPF, and HED foods in the US food system from 1988 to 2018 and the degree of distinction across definitions. Four data sets representing the US food system (1988, 2001, 2006, 2018) from the US Department of Agriculture were analyzed. UPF were identified based on the extent of industrialized processing. HPF were identified using the standardized definition that specifies palatability-inducing nutrient combinations. HED was characterized as >2.0 kcal/g. Across years, 58% to 65% of foods were classified as UPF, 55% to 69% as HPF, and 37% to 47% as HED. Prevalence of UPF, HPF, and HED foods was higher in 2018 versus 1988 (p values < 0.001); HPF evidenced the largest increase (14%) and UPF evidenced the smallest (4%) over time. There was moderate to high overlap in foods (40%-70%) across definitions. Together, UPF, HPF, and HED foods comprise most foods in the US food supply. Changes in availability varied across definitions, with substantial increases in HPF and HED and relative stability of UPF.

The twenty-first century challenges of climate change and resource scarcity bring a new urgency to the widely recognized sustainability challenges of the US food system. Environmental and social impacts associated with the geographic concentration and specialization in production, processing, and distribution that accompanied industrialization of the US food system have degraded our nation’s capacity to adapt to changing climate conditions. A consensus is emerging in sustainable food system scholarship that two fundamental changes—a transformation of production methods from industrial to sustainable and a transformation of food system geography from regional specialization to regional diversity—should enhance the resilience of the food system to climate change. A review of the literature suggests that transition to a nationally integrated network of sustainable metropolitan food systems (“metropolitan foodsheds”) would improve climate resilience by enhancing three key qualities associated with resilience in social-ecological systems—diversity, modularity, and balanced accumulation of capital assets. These qualities promote the capacity of a system to respond, to recover, and to transform in ways that reduce damaging effects and take advantage of opportunities created by change. Using a set of behavior-based resilience indicators in a review of case study research, this article examines the general resilience of sustainable production and supply chain systems. Sustainable production systems managed by award-winning sustainable food producers expressed all of the behaviors of a resilient system and demonstrated remarkable resilience to weather variability and extremes. These producers attributed the climate resilience of their farms and ranches to high-quality soils, planned biodiversity, and diversified marketing. Like many sustainable producers, these farmers and ranchers not only produce crops and livestock, they also participate in processing, distribution, and retailing. Resilient behavior was also expressed in sustainable supply chains developed by networked community cooperatives and through government investment in a large nonprofit food terminal. As recent food system planning projects in the USA illustrate, there is growing recognition of the potential sustainability and resilience benefits of regional food systems designed to develop positive relationships between the metropolitan core and surrounding areas. We can begin now to shift public support for a transition to more diversified production, to develop regional food system infrastructure, and to conduct comprehensive research to refine resilience indicators and develop food system performance metrics to guide a transformation of the US food system to a more sustainable and resilient future.

An Approach to Monitor Food and Nutrition from “Factory to Fork”

Today’s domestic US food production is the result of an industry optimized for competitive, high yielding, and high-growth production for a globalized market. Yet, industry growth may weaken food system resilience to abrupt disruptions by reducing the diversity of food supply sources. In this paper, we first explore shifts in food consumption toward reliance upon complex and long-distance food distribution, food imports, and out-of-home eating. Second, we discuss how large-scale, rapid-onset hazards may affect food access for both food secure and insecure households. We then consider whether and how regional food production might support regional food resilience. To illustrate these issues, we examine the case of western Washington, a region not only rich in agricultural production but also threatened by a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and tsunami. Such an event is expected to disrupt transportation and energy systems on which the dominant food distribution system relies. Whether a regional food supply—for the purposes of this paper, defined as food production in one or adjacent watersheds—can support a broader goal of community food resilience during large-scale disruption is a key theme of our paper. The discussion that ensues is not meant to offer simplistic, localist solutions as the one answer to disaster food provision, but neither should regional food sources be dismissed in food planning processes. Our exploration of regional farm production, small in scale and flexible, suggests regional production can help support food security prior to the arrival of emergency relief and retail restocking. Yet in order to do so, we need to have in place a robust and regionally appropriate food resilience strategy. This strategy should address caloric need, storage, and distribution, and, in so doing, rebalance our dependence on food supplied through imports and complex, domestic supply chains. Clearly, diversity of food sourcing can add redundancy and flexibility, allowing more nimble food system adaptation in the face of disruption.

PROTOCOL: Impact of the food environment on diet-related health outcomes in school-age children and adolescents in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review.

Food systems contribute considerably to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and influence land use. In Germany, many strategies have been proposed by policy-makers to reduce negative impacts and make the food system more sustainable. It is unclear how close the suggested policies, when bundled, will bring the food and land use system towards the targeted goals; and what stakeholders from non-policy-making organizations consider realistic changes in the German food system. We thus surveyed different stakeholder groups on their opinions about realistic changes in the food and land use system in Germany up to 2050, developed four stakeholder pathways, and used an accounting tool to determine the effect of each pathway on indicators such as land use, GHG emissions, and biodiversity conservation potential. The assessment showed that GHG emissions from agricultural activities and land use are reduced from 66 to − 2–22 TgCO2e by 2050, while the area where natural processes predominate increases from 19 to 27–32%, and the resilience of the food system is not negatively influenced. The change is caused mainly by a diet-change-induced reduction of livestock production and agricultural area transformation into areas with higher carbon sequestration rates. If followed, the common stakeholder pathway (based on all stakeholder responses) would thus lead towards a sustainable food and land use system, but only if the underlying assumption of a drastic diet change towards more plant-based products comes true. Stakeholders from the academic and public sectors were more likely to assume that such a change was realistic than stakeholders from the private sector.

A large body of literature has shown immigrant workers in the US food system experience and deal with significant problems that are often worsened in rural areas. The state and the private sector have created conditions that rely on cheap immigrant labor in the food industry. Paradoxically, this same much-needed labor force is subjected to strict immigration policy and enforcement—including raids, detentions, and deportations—and poor and living conditions. Immigration control and struggles experienced by immigrant workers in different sectors of the food chain, are more pronounced in rural areas where immigrants often lack of supportive resources. The struggles of historically marginalized groups in the food system and rural communities in the US are well-documented but more attention is needed on how rural immigrant workers deal with their challenges. Furthermore, more research is needed to examine immigrant workers’ collective actions and the development of alliances. Studies have shown that collective agency does not necessarily need to come from traditional labor organizing or unions which may face barriers in working with immigrants in rural contexts. There are some experiences in the poultry and dairy industry, showing that worker-driven organizations with focus on immigration, human rights, and/or social justice issues, have been able to create solutions for immigrant workers’ needs and challenges in US rural contexts. Some of these cases have shown how Latinx immigrant workers have been able to develop and foster resilience in times of uncertainty and challenges, working with immigrant organizations and allies. Experiences from different regions of the US have shown that there are complex and vulnerable realities that immigrants in rural areas often experience which require special attention and need to be addressed before unfair or precarious labor conditions are challenged. It is important for scholars and community practitioners to pay more attention to how immigrant workers and communities can develop resilience and the capability to adapt and create better conditions in times of increasing anti-immigration political rhetoric and uncertainty.

The climate change vulnerability of a food system is a function of the exposure of the system to specific climate effects, the sensitivity of the system to those effects, and the capacity of the system adapt to those effects in order to maintain system integrity. A synthesis of recent literature conducted to explore the vulnerability of the US food system to climate change suggests that the interaction between regional climate change effects and the geographic specialization and concentration of agricultural production in the USA increases the vulnerability of the US food system to climate change. Vegetable and fruit production in the Pacific states are particularly sensitive to reduced water supplies, warmer winters, and more variable spring weather. Grain production in the Great Plains and the Midwest is sensitive to more variable weather, warmer winters, heat wave, and hot summer nights and flooding caused by more frequent heavy rains. The concentration of beef, pork, and poultry production in confined animal feeding operations located in the southern Great Plains and the Southeast is particularly sensitive to increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather and interruptions in feed, water, and power supplies associated with interactions between land, water, and energy use that amplify climate change effects. There is evidence that climate change is already causing disruptions throughout the US food system. Farmers and ranchers in the US report that increased weather variability and more frequent and intense weather extremes have increased the costs and complexity of food production. Businesses operating in the US agricultural supply, processing, distribution, and retailing sectors are actively managing supply networks to reduce disruptions associated with climate change effects. Food systems that rely on external or distant resources and specialized production, supply, and marketing chains appear to be particularly vulnerable to global environmental change. These characteristics, widely recognized as critical challenges to the sustainability of the US food system, take on new importance as barriers to climate resilience.