NSF Org:	ITE Innovation and Technology Ecosystems
Recipient:	GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY (THE)
Initial Amendment Date:	December 9, 2022
Latest Amendment Date:	May 26, 2023
Award Number:	2236146
Award Instrument:	Standard Grant
Program Manager:	Michael Reksulak mreksula@nsf.gov  (703)292-8326 ITE  Innovation and Technology Ecosystems TIP  Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships
Start Date:	December 15, 2022
End Date:	May 31, 2024 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount:	$749,994.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date:	$749,994.00
Funds Obligated to Date:	FY 2023 = $749,994.00
History of Investigator:	Uriyoan Colon-Ramos (Principal Investigator) uriyoan@gwu.edu Joel Gittelsohn (Co-Principal Investigator) Crystal Díaz (Co-Principal Investigator) Oscar Melendez (Co-Principal Investigator) Michael Long (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office:	George Washington University 1918 F ST NW WASHINGTON DC  US  20052-0042 (202)994-0728
Sponsor Congressional District:	00
Primary Place of Performance:	George Washington University 1918 F ST NW WASHINGTON DC  US  20052-0042
Primary Place of Performance Congressional District:	00
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI):	ECR5E2LU5BL6
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s):	Convergence Accelerator Resrch
Primary Program Source:	01002324DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s):
Program Element Code(s):	131Y00
Award Agency Code:	4900
Fund Agency Code:	4900
Assistance Listing Number(s):	47.084

ABSTRACT

The impact of climate change on nutrition insecurity, disease and death continues to intensify, with more devastating and long-lasting consequences among the world?s most vulnerable peoples. To date, the central challenge to accelerate solutions to nutrition insecurity lies in joining citizen engagement with policy action to reform existing systems. The first step to achieve this, and the objective of this Convergence Accelerator Phase 1 work is to develop a shared understanding across citizens from diverse sectors and disciplines about how food and climate systems have converged in the archipelago of Puerto Rico (PR), allowing for the identification and testing of strategies to increase demand for nutritious and climate-friendly foods among food insecure individuals.
This work builds on existing commercially successful digital models in PR, a highly food insecure and climate-vulnerable region, to identify how to increase demand for nutritious and climate-friendly foods among food insecure individuals and to generate real-time user-level data that can be integrated into data systems dynamic computational model to inform citizen engagement and policy action. This is the first collaboration of its kind to use data generated from food insecure digital app users in real time to: 1) model how the food and climate systems have converged and affect nutrition security and, 2) promote nutritious, climate-friendly products in a highly food insecure region of the US. The proposed work broadens participation from under-represented groups in scientific research, will contribute to better alignment between food producers and low-income consumers, and brings together locally generated innovations across sectors to stimulate new solutions to the convergence problem. This work will set the foundation and needed data to eventually develop a user-friendly dashboard to test (via mathematical simulation) how various food security and climate health initiatives and policies could impact nutrition security in PR and elsewhere.

Phase 1 has two specific aims. Aim 1: To develop a shared understanding across multiple sectors about the system dynamics that drive nutrition insecurity and climate health in PR, this work will employ Community-Based System Dynamics participatory methods (e.g., group model building). The deliverable for Aim 1 is a qualitative Causal Loop Diagram and levers that can inform context-appropriate viable solutions to achieve nutritional security and climate health in PR. Aim 2: Building on an existing and commercially-viable digital application in PR and from the Causal Loop Diagram (aim 1), aim 2 will use human-centered design approaches to identify how the digital application can expand its reach to address nutrition and climate health among food insecure citizens. Then a randomized design will be used to test various digital strategies to ?nudge? the selection of climate and nutrition-friendly products among 600 food insecure app users throughout PR (recruited specifically for this study). The primary outcome is a score for nutrition and climate-friendly products in users? shopping carts. The digital app captures real-time data about consumers? food shopping decisions and will be expanded to include food security, food literacy (i.e., climate and nutrition security public awareness), and aggregated to local food producer data (i.e., agricultural measures, productivity, sales).
Phase 1 deliverables include: 1) a Causal Loop Diagram with feedback loops and potentially viable solutions that can be disseminated. It will be used to structure a quantitative model that can be calibrated with Phase1 (Aim 1) data, and with new data to be collected in Phase 2; and 2) ranking and refinement of context-appropriate user-inspired strategies that hold promise for further testing in a potentially commercially viable prototype in Phase 2.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

 

The impact of climate change on nutrition insecurity, disease and death continues to intensify, with more devastating and long-lasting consequences among the world's most vulnerable peoples. To date, the central challenge to accelerate solutions to nutrition insecurity lies in joining citizen engagement with policy action to reform existing systems. As a first step and during Phase 1, this Convergence Accelerator work developed a shared understanding across citizens from diverse sectors and disciplines about how food and climate systems have converged in the archipelago of Puerto Rico (PR), allowing for the identification and testing of strategies to increase demand for nutritious and climate-friendly foods.

This work built on existing commercially successful digital models in PR, a highly food insecure and climate-vulnerable region, to identify how to increase demand for nutritious and climate-friendly foods. The proposed work broadened participation from under-represented groups in scientific research, contributed to better alignment between food producers and low-income consumers, and brought together locally generated innovations across sectors to stimulate new solutions to the convergence problem. 

Phase 1 had two specific aims which were achieved. Aim 1: To develop a shared understanding across multiple sectors about the system dynamics that drive nutrition insecurity and climate health in PR, this work employed Community-Based System Dynamics participatory methods (e.g., group model building). The deliverable for Aim 1 was a qualitative Causal Loop Diagram and opportunities that informed context-appropriate viable solutions to achieve nutritional security and climate health in PR. Aim 2: Building on an existing and commercially-viable digital application in PR and from the Causal Loop Diagram findings (aim 1), aim 2 used human-centered design approaches to identify how the digital application could expand its reach to address nutrition and climate health. A randomized design was used to test various digital strategies to nudge the selection of climate and nutrition-friendly products among over 900 users throughout PR (recruited specifically for this study). The primary outcome was a score for nutrition and climate-friendly products in users' shopping carts. The digital app captured real-time data about consumers’ food shopping decisions and was expanded to include food security, food literacy (i.e., climate and nutrition security public awareness). To complete these aims, we also conducted formative work, including: a descriptive survey (n>900); in-depth interviews, field visits and literature and internal document reviews.

Phase 1 deliverables included: 1) a Causal Loop Diagram with feedback loops and potentially viable solutions. 2) ranking and refinement of context-appropriate user-inspired strategies that hold promise.

Taken together, our findings from the Causal Loop Diagram, interviews, digital test, survey and literature reviews suggested that: (1) consumers in PR valued products that favored the local economy; (2) consumers increasingly demanded products that promoted health and nutrition; (3) citizens in PR were highly alarmed about climate change and thought it important to purchase local, nutritious, and climate-friendly foods; and (4) these demands and concerns were perceived as disconnected from each other. For this reason, the solutions most often implemented were also fragmented and disconnected.

Emerging form these findings, our recommendation is to engage diverse sectors and communities under one cohesive goal: to transform local food systems for a healthier planet. The underlying rationale was that climate health solutions were only adopted and implemented if diverse sectors aligned goals under joint solutions. We must integrated teaching about the interconnections between climate change, human food & nutrition systems, and agricultural systems at the local level. 

 

Last Modified: 07/11/2024
Modified by: Uriyoan Colon-Ramos

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