Community and academia partnerships in the lower Mississippi delta

The Lower Mississippi Delta (LMD) region of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi is among the poorest and most disadvantaged areas of the United States. The diets of the people in the LMD are high in fat, and consumption of fruits and vegetables is low. Chronic conditions such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer rates are high. In 1995, Congress through the USDA's Agriculture Research Services funded the multiyear Lower MS Delta Nutrition Intervention Research Initiative (Delta NIRI) project. The Delta NIRI project was a consortium of seven institutions of higher education and research from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and the Agricultural Research Services (ARS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The primary goals of the Delta NIRI project was to evaluate nutrition and health status in the LMD and to design, implement, and scientifically evaluate nutrition interventions using community participatory methodologies. In this chapter, we describe the functioning of the Lower Mississippi Delta NIRI project community-academia partnerships. We also discuss the structures used to gain community participation to address nutrition issues.