About SPINE
Though challenges surfaced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including increased food and nutrition insecurity, so have potential opportunities to support states in addressing health risk factors and increasing overall community resiliency for chronic disease prevention. The State Partnerships Improving Nutrition & Equity (SPINE) program promotes equitable and sustainable food and nutrition security. In collaboration with our funder, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity (DNPAO), and a team of subject matter experts, NACDD supports State Health Departments in addressing food and nutrition security through sustainable and equitable actions that tackle economic and social conditions limiting food and nutrition security across the lifespan through a policy, systems, and environmental change lens. Health equity is foundational to the SPINE program and will be integrated throughout the planning, action, and evaluation phases of the project, in addition to considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
NACDD is providing tailored and extensive training and technical assistance (T/TA) to nine SPINE states to build and implement sustainable partnerships and programs and services into existing efforts, especially in communities with populations at high risk (Black, Latinx, American Indian/Native American, young children, aging adults, and people with disabilities). States will work towards the achievement of the following outcomes:
- Sustainable cross-sector partnerships that will support the implementation of a SPINE State Action Plan (SAP) focused on increasing sustainable and equitable access to affordable, safe, and nutritious food across the lifespan during COVID-19; and
- Improved capacity to leverage resources from multiple partners and sectors at the state and local levels to implement evidence-based and community-clinical linkage strategies.
These activities and outcomes focus on ensuring that all have access to enough safe and culturally relevant foods that meets their dietary needs and food preferences.
Contact Us
For more information about the SPINE Program, email Patrilie Hernandez at phernandez_ic@chronicdisease.org or Charita James at cjames_ic@chronicdisease.org
The following States have been awarded funding for the SPINE program (listed alphabetically):
Charita James MS, RD (she/her) 
Charita is a Public Health Consultant within the Center for Advancing Healthy Communities at the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors. She is a Registered Dietitian with over 10 years of diverse experiences in the public health nutrition realm. She has a deep interest in community nutrition, food justice, and nutrition security. Charita has a successful track record for developing and implementing community programs that promote health equity, develop young food justice leaders, and build the capacity of organizations to carry out healthy food projects. Charita is also the founder and CEO of My SoulFull Nutrition, a wellness consulting company that provides support and nutrition education to individuals and groups who desire to have a more nourishing and balanced diet from a cultural lens. She holds a MS in Nutritional Sciences from Rutgers University, and a BS in Community Health Education from Hunter College. Charita enjoys traveling, trying new cuisines, fitness, spending time with family and doing anything that involves self-care (including binge watching shows on Netflix).
Patrilie Hernandez, MS (she/they)
Patrilie is a Public Health Consultant within the Center for Advancing Healthy Communities at the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors. She has over 14 years of professional experience that has shaped her understanding of health and nutrition as not only individual pursuits, but how they seamlessly intersect with our built environment, equity, and social justice. After initially working in the restaurant industry in both back and front of the house for over five years, she redirected her love for food to nutrition education, anti-hunger advocacy, and policymaking around food access and food justice. Since then, Patrilie’s work in nutrition has broadened to address the other social determinants of health that influence individual and community wellbeing. Combining her academic background in culinary arts, anthropology, nonprofit management, and nutrition, Patrilie is also the founder and CEO of Embody Lib, an organization that seeks to partner with medical, health & wellness, and educational stakeholders in applying weight-inclusive and multi-dimensional frameworks that assist in improving the health of people of the of the global majority. In her spare time, she likes cooking for others, looking at the moon, and spending time with her partner and her chihuahua.
SPINE is a program of the Center for Advancing Healthy Communities.