Suzanne Rauzon Evaluation Consultant 510-325-4128 srauzon@berkeley.edu Suzanne Rauzon, MPH Suzanne is a director of community health projects and evaluation studies. She has over 15 years' experience leading community-based initiatives and developing organizational and community change strategies. She has developed partnerships and collaborative projects working on a wide range of sectors and approaches, including several school-based interventions, a nationwide cardiovascular risk screening effort and work site health initiatives. She holds an MPH (University of California, Berkeley, 1986). She has expertise in strategic communications, change management and public health planning. Suzanne also has credentials in the fields of nutrition and exercise physiology, and is affiliated with the Center for Weight and Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

Suzanne RauzonEvaluation Consultant 510-325-4128srauzon@berkeley.edu Suzanne Rauzon, MPHSuzanne is a director of community health projects and evaluation studies.She has over 15 years experience leading community-based initiatives and developing organizational and community change strategies.She has developed partnerships and collaborative projects working on a wide range of sectors and approaches, including several school-based interventions, a nation-wide cardiovascular risk screening effort and work site health initiatives.She holds an MPH (University of California-Berkeley, 1986).She has expertise in strategic communications, change management and public health planning.Suzanne also has credentials in the fields of nutrition and exercise physiology, and is affiliated with the University of California at Berkeley, Center for Weight and Health.

Rauzon and colleagues evaluated the School Lunch Initiative to examine its effects on students' eating behaviors, attitudes about healthy eating and environmental responsibility, and knowledge about nutrition and food and the environment. To evaluate program impacts, researchers compared over 200 4th and 5th grade students over a period of 3 years from 4 different schools-2 with highly developed School Lunch Initiative programs and 2 with lesser-developed School Lunch Initiative programs. Participants completed food diaries and answered questionnaires about their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors as they related to nutrition, food, and the environment. In addition, researchers conducted interviews with school staff, observed food service environments, collected information on students' academic test scores and body mass index, and had parents of participating students complete a survey related to family and neighborhood characteristics. In analyzing the data, Rauzon and colleagues found that the School Lunch Initiative had positive impacts on students' nutrition knowledge, preference for and consumption of healthy foods, and food-related attitudes. Author Affiliation: Suzanne Rauzon is with the University of California at Berkeley. Rauzon, S., Wang, M., Studer, N., & Crawford, P. (2010).

But as UC-Berkeley researcher Suzanne Rauzon, lead author on the SLI report, observes, such findings were outside the purview of this report and would require a larger student sample followed for a greater period of time to determine any correlation between the two. For now, Rauzon finds the results encouraging and, she says, clear evidence that a program like the School Lunch Initiative is an effective tool in reinforcing a wide variety of healthy eating behaviors among the young.

Suzanne Rauzon