Nutrition, Obesity, and Health

Scope, focus, and relevancy of this collection

According to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, more than one-third of all American children and two-thirds of American adults are obese. The obesity epidemic sweeping the country has prompted government agencies, organizations, and research operations to focus on gathering and disseminating scientific evidence related to nutrition, obesity, and health. This collection endeavors to collect the wide variety of digital publications originating at the federal and state (Virginia) level from these agencies and organizations, and that are already available via government web pages.

While many research-based reports and legislative documents that are part of this collection are highly technical and difficult for a consumer to understand, many of them also come with executive summaries or simple breakdowns that are more digestible to the average consumer. This collection endeavors to capture this translation of research into practical knowledge and recommendations.

Furthermore, one of the goals of this collection is to provide a single access point to digital publications produced by the many different agencies and research organizations producing relevant information. Because government websites can be difficult to search and information can be spread across a number of different websites and other web publications, this collection aims to simplify access to documents and research related to nutrition, obesity, and health.

Selection criteria include relevance of content, appropriateness of document format, and legal and technical considerations.

Strategy for building collection

Subject experts from Virginia Tech’s University Libraries will work closely with faculty from the Libraries’ Digital Libraries & Archives department in order to select, organize, provide access to, and publicize the resources that will be integrated into local digital collections.

Collection parameters

The topic for this collection is nutrition, obesity, and health. The collected documents are primarily in English, and all metadata will be written in English. The collection will include materials such as national policies, national standards and guidelines, government documents, legislative law, research reports, and information for consumers from relevant sources.

Sources

Many of the government agencies and organizations listed below maintain dynamic webpages, which allow users to capture RSS feeds that allow for easy and instantaneous access to updates relating to resources and legislation related to nutrition, obesity, and health.

Major contributors producing publications relevant to this collection include:

United States Department of Agriculture

• Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion
• Food and Nutrition Service
• Agricultural Research Service

United States Department of Health and Human Services

• Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Virginia Department of Health

• Division of Prevention and Health Promotion

Virginia Department of Education

• School Nutrition

Target audience

A wide variety of academic disciplines and research communities may have an interest in this collection:

• Public health professionals
• Veterinary medicine professionals
• Medical professionals
• Dietetic professionals
• Food scientists, analysts, and technologists
• Cooperative extension agents
• Life science researchers
• Health behavior researchers
• Human factors engineering community

Virginia Tech agriculture, veterinary medicine, and human nutrition, food and exercise scientists conduct research that spans the continuum from producer to consumer. The result is practical solutions for safely producing, processing, and distributing nutritious foods and new knowledge about human and animal health. Researchers in psychology and engineering also address issues of health, such as encouraging healthy behavior.

The Center for Research in Health Behavior is a leader in developing preventive intervention strategies for helping people initiate and sustain critical health behavior changes. Research has focused on cancer and heart disease risk reduction and HIV risk reduction. Sponsors are the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society. More information available: http://www.research.vt.edu/solving/hownutrition.php

Specific goals for this collection

Specifically, goals for collecting documents for the Nutrition, Obesity, and Health collection include ensuring the collection’s relevance for faculty, students, and other researchers. Collection decisions will be made based on current scholarship and research at Virginia Tech. The short term goal of this project is to build a valuable, relevant nutrition collection built to serve the information needs of a wide variety of researchers and other users.

Long term goals of this collection include developing new partnerships, expanding the breadth of topics housed within the collection, supporting Virginia Tech’s mission as a land-grant university to disseminate research to practitioners, and, ultimately, to develop an excellent collection of resources revolving around nutrition, obesity, and health.