Center for Managing Chronic Disease - Putting People at the Center of Solutions

Featured Program

Youth Engagement in the Food and Fitness Initiative

Successful youth engagement involves youth in meaningful roles and decision-making activities as part of important initiatives in collaboration with adults. This approach is a key component of the Food and Fitness Initiative, a Center program which actively incorporates youth perspectives into work focused on policy and systems change strategies addressing food systems, the built environment, and physical activity.

The Center, in collaboration with nine communities across the United States and the W.K.Kellogg Foundation, is working towards understanding the different ways in which youth are contributing to the goals of their local community collaborative as well as to the overall Food and Fitness Initiative. The Center's focus on youth engagement will involve a longitudinal examination of how their contributions affected the goals of the initiative as well as subsequent like skills the youth may have obtained, including enhanced knowledge in the food and fitness area and leadership skills.

At a June 2008 Food and Fitness meeting in Detroit, Michigan, youth contributed numerous valuable perspectives that would have been lost without their involvement. These perspectives ranged from how the presentation of food in a school cafeteria affects whether or not students will eat it, no matter how healthy or unhealthy it may be, to the understood notion that most middle and high school students view Physical Education as a class one can fail without serious consequence. The Center aims to harness the viewpoints of youth, like those above, to document a critical aspect of the Food and Fitness Initiative and views its success in meaningfully involving youth as visionary to creating vibrant, healthy communities of tomorrow.

View All Current Programs

Advancing the Management of Chronic Disease

The Center for Managing Chronic Disease conducts research and demonstration that aim to build the capacity of individuals, families, communities, and health care systems to effectively prevent and manage chronic disease. It is a worldwide collaboration of researchers and interventionists who focus their work on management of heart disease, diabetes, respiratory disease, breast cancer, allergy, Alzheimer's disease, and factors associated with obesity. The Center pursues its mission nationally and internationally collaborating with colleagues who are doing innovative work related to the social, behavioral, environmental and clinical aspects of chronic disease control. The Center fosters these collaborations to create new approaches to disease management and also adapts projects and programs successful in one area for use in another. We disseminate successful interventions so they reach the largest number of people, in particular, low-income families, minorities, children, older adults and women. While no one intervention is likely to change the picture of chronic disease, the Center believes that careful research of an array of solutions for individuals, families, clinicians, and systems will evolve into what collectively can achieve optimum disease management and control.

Research & Dissemination

On this website, you will find descriptions of the wide range of the Center's research projects. We are also very interested in dissemination of findings.

Unless findings from research and demonstration reach people in need, they have little impact. Nonetheless, many results from good studies remain on the shelf and fail to make a difference for people trying to manage chronic conditions. The Center is committed to this not happening with its studies, programs, and products. As a result, a Dissemination team within the Center focuses on getting effective interventions broadly used and making findings widely accessible.

Learn more about our research projects