Development of the New York State Nutrition Surveillance Program

New York State established a Nutrition Surveillance Program (NSP) in 1984. Precedents for the program included the Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System of the Public Health Service's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and periodic food and nutrition surveys conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics and the Human Nutrition Information Service, Department of Agriculture. The first phase of NSP was connected to a new program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which established support for more than 1,000 emergency food programs across the State. SNAP also expanded the home delivered meal program for the frail elderly and the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children. NSP provided information on the extent of unmet nutrition needs that was used to establish funding requests and provided data describing the characteristics of SNAP participants that were used in developing new SNAP program components. The second phase of NSP began in 1988. It identified populations that were thought to be at nutrition risk and compiled information about the extent of unmet need, the characteristics of the population, and the status of current nutrition programs to meet the needs. As a result of this review, NSP added a nutrition component to the Dental Survey of School Children; conducted a dietary survey; developed an inventory of information sources in all State agencies; and established an annual work plan using department of health objectives. The third phase of NSP is the policy and planning phase, monitoring the Year 2000 Objectives and the Five-Year Plan of the New York State Food and Nutrition Policy Council.