Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education in Los Angeles County: Lessons and observations from the field, 2013–2016

Although the California Department of Public Health has been delivering nutrition education for nearly two decades, the use of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) resources to advance policy, systems, and environmental change interventions (PSEs) to prevent obesity has been relatively recent. To date, most efforts to couple PSEs to conventional nutrition education have not been well-studied and as such, their lessons have not been used extensively in local planning. This special issue seeks to close this gap by sharing lessons from the planning and implementation of these efforts in Los Angeles County during the 2013–2016 SNAP-Ed funding cycle. It comprises a collection of six articles that recount key experiences from this work in the field.