Learn how to assess the food and nutrition environment to understand its effect on healthy eating behavior and access to nutritious food.
The content of this free introductory course was originally developed by the NEMS team, now hosted by the University of Pennsylvania. These videos are designed to be supplements of the existing NEMS toolkits and protocols available through the NEMS website. These modules are designed to instruct researchers, students, planners, and health practitioners on observational measures for evaluating food and nutrition environments. Modules of this course offer tools and tricks for assessing the presence and accessibility of healthy foods in stores and restaurants, and how NEMS measures may be adapted or customized.
How to Use the NEMS Course
NEMS is for anyone interested in learning how to understand and evaluate the accessibility and healthfulness of an area food environment. You can use it for yourself, share it with other members of your research or evaluation team, or offer it as a resource for students.
The NEMS Course currently comprises 4 modules:
- An introduction to NEMS and the importance of measuring nutrition environments
- How to use NEMS-S for grocery stores
- How to use NEMS-R for restaurants and other public dining environments
- Customizing NEMS measures for tailored use and measurement
Each module contains a narrated instructional video and supporting resources, including protocols, research studies, and instructions for the tools and methods you will learn.
We recommend beginning with Module 1 and customizing your use of the course from there. With NEMS, we would advise reviewing NEMS-S and NEMS-R before going onto the customization module, as a basic understanding of each tool is assumed in the discussion of how to adapt the measures for your particular needs.
Current NEMS Modules
NEMS History and Acknowledgements
In 2005, Glanz, Sallis, Saelens, and Frank outlined the concepts and measures needed to understand nutrition environment as a combination of policy, environmental, and individual variables impacting healthy eating. In this paper, they identified that community, organizational, consumer, and informational food environments all affect food access and dietary choices by individuals. Understanding the roles played by each factor of this complex set required a way of assessing nutrition environments in full.
NEMS-R and NEMS-S were developed via testing in 2004 and 2005 and rigorously assessed for reliability and validity in their measurement of healthfulness and accessibility of food options in restaurants and stores. Additional measures and adaptations have since been developed and tested; a systematic review of studies using NEMS was published in 2023.
NEMS is funded with support from the National Institutes of Health, the United States Agricultural Department, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Georgia Cancer Coalition, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Center for Health Behavior Research at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 2021, the People, Health, and Place Unit of the Washington University in St. Louis Prevention Research Center committed to updating and reestablishing the online BEAT Institute and NEMS training programs to supplement the existing NEMS resources available at the University of Pennsylvania. Course modules will be added and updated in the years to come.
Contact Us
This site is actively maintained by the Washington University PHP Unit, and will undergo frequent updates as new content becomes available. Contact Dr. Rodrigo Reis at reis.rodrigo@wustl.edu if you have any questions.