FHI 360 manages the Coordinating Center for the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR) in the United States, which brings together four of the nation’s leading research organizations — the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and U.S. Department of Agriculture — in a public-private partnership to accelerate progress on reversing the epidemic of overweightness and obesity among U.S. youth. NCCOR members leverage each partners’ financial, managerial and intellectual resources to create efficiencies, build capacity, strengthen resources and achieve national impact. FHI 360 provides critical, substantive support in strategic planning and coordination, communication, project and research support, and evaluation.
As the Coordinating Center, FHI 360 helps funders work together to move activities rapidly and respond to the greatest needs in the field. We coordinate a pipeline of projects through various workgroups to build and disseminate knowledge on research topics and promote tools and products to the field. FHI 360 also coordinates NCCOR workgroups, Connect & Explore webinars and expert panels to facilitate research agendas and share findings with the field and manages NCCOR’s website and social media platforms.
FHI 360 led the development of the Measures Registry User Guides and accompanying Learning Modules to enhance use of the Measures Registry, a database of diet and physical activity measures. This suite of tools, funded in part through a strategic alliance with The JPB Foundation, helps researchers select the most appropriate measures for their work and provides an overview of key concepts in measurement. FHI 360 works to expand access to these and other NCCOR resources — including the Catalogue of Surveillance Systems and the Youth Compendium of Physical Activity — to researchers, practitioners, faculty and students.
NCCOR’s innovative approach to partnership building has won several awards, including the inaugural HHS Innovates Award in 2010, as well as an NIH Director’s Award. In addition, authors of the youth compendium tool received a National Cancer Institute Director’s Award in November 2018.
