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Purpose/Objectives: The objective of this study was to determine the perceived training needs of California school nutrition personnel. Methods: A questionnaire was developed using items from previous questionnaires administered to similar populations. New items were written based on feedback from stakeholders. Respondents were asked to rate their perceived need for each training topic, using a Likert scale ranging from "not part of my job" to "really needed." Survey dissemination followed Dillman's tailored design method. A series of emails, which included a link to a web-based questionnaire, were sent to programs participating in the NSLP ("n" = 1490) over the course of several weeks. An option to complete a paper copy of the questionnaire was available. Results: A total of 994 respondents initiated the web-based survey. Of these, 739 (74.3%) completed the survey. An additional 34 respondents completed paper questionnaires. Respondents indicated a need for training in topics related to: program management; the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010; nutrition, health and wellness; planning, preparing, and serving meals; and communication and marketing. Those employed in residential child care institutions expressed a strong need for training specific to this type of program. Applications to Child Nutrition Professionals: The survey used in this study illuminates the perceived training needs of school nutrition program directors, managers, and staff in California. The results of this research will be useful in guiding the development of training courses and strategic plans for providing trainings and resources in California. The results may also assist other states in developing training plans and resources.

This paper will develop and explain a conceptual framework for the use of business industry marketing techniques within the higher educational spectrum. This framework will demonstrate how sound marketing management can help higher education increase its effectiveness and improve student interest, as well as encourage the development of managerial skills that will lead to better operational efficiency. The material will be presented in a detailed, specific, and practical manner that can be utilized by educational administrators. There are many benefits in the utilization of the marketing concept for higher education. Marketing can lead to a better understanding of your customer (student), a more efficient use of money geared specifically towards your target market, a better understanding of where your college or university stands relative to your competitors. Marketing can also help create a more effective use of your human resources and an increased awareness of marketing trends. Marketing, specifically targeted towards the student using the nine p's and taking into account the differences between marketing for higher education and marketing for products, may result in improved student interest towards the marketed university or college, which may result in higher enrollment.

To prepare students for the rapidly evolving field of digital marketing, which requires more and more technical skills every year, a social media practicum creates a learning environment in which students can apply marketing principles and become ready for collaborative work in social media marketing and analytics. Using student newspapers as examples, the practicum adopts an action-learning approach to enhance student knowledge and skills in social media. This paper describes the structure, process, and tools that support this practical experience in a marketing course. The extent to which the practicum helps in preparing students is assessed and reported.

With tuition on the rise, Auxiliary Services departments at a variety of colleges and universities are proving that they can innovate and still save their parent institutions cash. Primary areas of innovation include: (1) With advancements in technology, institutions are moving campus purchasing programs into the wireless space; (2) As junk mail proliferates, learning centers are finding new ways to eliminate paper waste and improve efficiency across the board; and (3) As environmental conservation becomes a bigger concern, schools are embracing buildings that don't harm the Earth, and many of the services involved in those efforts make use of "green" approaches and innovative technologies. The author reports on how auxiliary services are used at various institutions.

Background and aims: There are concerns that availability of recreational cannabis dispensaries (RCDs) and point‐of‐sale marketing may lead to increased cannabis use in jurisdictions where cannabis retail sale is legal. This paper examined whether the availability RCDs and the presence of storefront signage indicative of cannabis and signs promoting health benefits in RCDs were associated with cannabis use and risk perceptions. Design: Cross‐sectional, secondary data analysis. Setting: California, USA. Participants: A representative sample of 3385 adults in California who participated in the 2020 probability‐based Marijuana Use and Environment Survey. Measurements Binary outcomes included past‐month overall cannabis use, perceiving cannabis smoking as harmful and past‐month cannabis use by purpose (medical only, recreational only and dual). The objectively assessed predictors included proximity and density of RCDs and presence of storefront signage indicative of cannabis and signs promoting health benefits in RCDs. Findings In terms of proximity, thepresence of storefront signage in the nearest RCD was associated with smaller odds of perceiving cannabis smoking as harmful [odds ratio (OR) = 0.63, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.39, 0.99] if the RCD was located within 2 miles of home. Presence of health benefit signs in the nearest RCD was associated with greater odds of overall cannabis use (OR = 2.45, 95% CI = 1.17, 5.16) and recreational use (OR = 3.50, 95% CI = 1.027, 11.91) if the RCD was located within 2–4 miles of home. In terms of density, count of RCDs, count of RCDs with storefront signage and count of RCDs with health benefit signs within 2 miles of home were each separately associated with greater odds of overall cannabis use and cannabis use for dual purposes. Conclusions: The availability of recreational cannabis dispensaries within 2 miles of one's home and the presence of storefront signage indicating the availability of cannabis and signs promoting health benefits of cannabis appear to be associated with increased cannabis use and reduced risk perceptions among adults in California, USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study direct load control contracts that utilities use to curtail customers' electricity consumption during peak-load periods. These contracts place limits on the number of calls and total number of hours of power reduction per customer per year as well as the duration of each call. The stochastic dynamic program that determines how many customers to call and the timing and duration of each call for each day is an extremely difficult (NP-hard) optimization problem. We design a scenario-based approximation method to generate probabilistic allocation polices in a reasonable amount of time. Our approach consists of three approximations: deterministic approximation of demand, discretization of the expected demand, and aggregation/disaggregation of the resources. We show the relative information error resulting from the deterministic approximation is O (1 / n) , the discretization error is O (1 / n) , and the aggregation/disaggregation error is O (1 / n) , where n represents the length of the horizon. Finally, we show the total relative error is O (1 / n). Our error analysis establishes that our approximation method is near optimal. In addition, our extensive numerical experiments verify the high quality of our approximation approach. The error, conservatively measured, is quite small and has an average and standard deviation of 8.6% and 1.4%, respectively. We apply our solution approach to the data provided by three major utility companies in California. Overall, our study shows our procedure improves the savings in energy-generation cost by 37.7% relative to current practices. This paper was accepted by Chung Piaw Teo, optimization. Funding: The authors thank the UCLA Ziman Center's Howard and Irene Levine Program in Housing and Social Responsibility and the Morrison Family Center for Marketing Studies and Data Analytics for generous funding. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4493. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban food swamps are typically situated in low-income, minority communities and contribute to overweight and obesity. Changing the food landscape in low income and underserved communities is one strategy to combat the negative health consequences associated with the lack of access to healthy food resources and an abundance of unhealthy food venues. In this paper, we describe Proyecto MercadoFRESCO (Fresh Market Project), a corner store intervention project in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights in California that used a multi-level approach with a broad range of community, business, and academic partners. These are two neighboring, predominantly Latino communities that have high rates of overweight and obesity. Located in these two communities are approximately 150 corner stores. The project used a community-engaged approach to select, recruit, and convert four corner stores, so that they could become healthy community assets in order to improve residents' access to and awareness of fresh and affordable fruits and vegetables in their immediate neighborhoods. We describe the study framework for the multi-level intervention, which includes having multiple stakeholders, expertise in corner store operations, community and youth engagement strategies, and social marketing campaigns. We also describe the evaluation and survey methodology to determine community and patron impact of the intervention. This paper provides a framework useful to a variety of public health stakeholders for implementing a community-engaged corner store conversion, particularly in an urban food swamp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distribution shifts remain a problem for the safe application of regulated medical AI systems, and may impact their real-world performance if undetected. Postmarket shifts can occur for example if algorithms developed on data from various acquisition settings and a heterogeneous population are predominantly applied in hospitals with lower quality data acquisition or other centre-specific acquisition factors, or where some ethnicities are over-represented. Therefore, distribution shift detection could be important for monitoring AI-based medical products during postmarket surveillance. We implemented and evaluated three deep-learning based shift detection techniques (classifier-based, deep kernel, and multiple univariate kolmogorov-smirnov tests) on simulated shifts in a dataset of 130'486 retinal images. We trained a deep learning classifier for diabetic retinopathy grading. We then simulated population shifts by changing the prevalence of patients' sex, ethnicity, and co-morbidities, and example acquisition shifts by changes in image quality. We observed classification subgroup performance disparities w.r.t. image quality, patient sex, ethnicity and co-morbidity presence. The sensitivity at detecting referable diabetic retinopathy ranged from 0.50 to 0.79 for different ethnicities. This motivates the need for detecting shifts after deployment. Classifier-based tests performed best overall, with perfect detection rates for quality and co-morbidity subgroup shifts at a sample size of 1000. It was the only method to detect shifts in patient sex, but required large sample sizes ( > 3 0 ′ 000 ). All methods identified easier-to-detect out-of-distribution shifts with small (≤300) sample sizes. We conclude that effective tools exist for detecting clinically relevant distribution shifts. In particular classifier-based tests can be easily implemented components in the post-market surveillance strategy of medical device manufacturers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The California energy crisis in 2000-2001 showed what could happen to an electricity market if it did not go through a comprehensive and rigorous testing before its implementation. Due to the complexity of the market structure, strategic interaction between the participants, and the underlying physics, it is difficult to fully evaluate the implications of potential changes to market rules. This paper presents a flexible and integrative method to assess market designs through agent-based modeling. Realistic simulation scenarios are constructed for evaluation of the proposed PJM-like market power mitigation rules of the California electricity market. Simulation results show that in the absence of market power mitigation, generation company (GENCO) agents facilitated by Q-learning are able to exploit the market flaws and make significantly higher profits relative to the competitive benchmark. The incorporation of PJM-like local market power mitigation rules is shown to be effective in suppressing the exercise of market power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Studies of retail alcohol outlets are restricted to regions due to lack of U.S. national data. Commercial business lists (BL) offer a possible solution, but no data exists to determine if BLs could serve as an adequate proxy for license data. This paper compares geospatial measures of alcohol outlets derived from a commercial BL with license data for a large US state.Methods: We validated BL data as a measure of off-premise alcohol outlet density and proximity compared to license data for 5528 randomly selected California residential addresses. We calculated three proximity measures (Euclidean distance, road network travel time and distance) and two density measures (kernel density estimation and the count within a 2-mile radius) for each dataset. The data was acquired in 2015 and processed and analyzed in 2015 and 2016.Results: Correlations and reliabilities between density (correlation 0.98; Cronbach's α 0.97-0.99) and proximity (correlations 0.77-0.86; α 0.87-0.92) measures were high. For proximity, BL data matched license in 55-57% of addresses, overstated distance in 19%, and understated in 24-26%.Conclusions: BL data can serve as a reliable proxy for licensed alcohol outlets, thus extending the work that can be performed in studies on associations between retail alcohol outlets and drinking outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Most evidence-based interventions to improve fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption target individual behaviors and family systems; however, these changes are difficult to sustain without environmental support. This paper describes an innovative social and structural food store-based intervention to increase availability and accessibility of FVs in tiendas (small- to medium-sized Latino food stores) and purchasing and consumption of FVs among tienda customers., Methods: Using a cluster randomized controlled trial with 16 tiendas pair-matched and randomized to an intervention or wait-list control condition, this study will evaluate a 2-month intervention directed at tiendas, managers, and employees followed by a 4-month customer-directed food marketing campaign. The intervention involves social (e.g., employee trainings) and structural (e.g., infrastructure) environmental changes. Three hundred sixty-nine customers (approximately 23 per tienda) serve on an evaluation cohort and complete assessments (interviews and measurements of weight) at 3 time points: baseline, 6-months post-baseline, and 12-months post-baseline. The primary study outcome is customer-reported daily consumption of FVs. Manager interviews and monthly tienda audits and collection of sales data will provide evidence of tienda-level intervention effects, our secondary outcomes. Process evaluation methods assess dose delivered, dose received, and fidelity., Results: Recruitment of tiendas, managers, employees, and customers is complete. Demographic data shows that 30% of the customers are males, thus providing a unique opportunity to examine the effects of a tienda-based intervention on Latino men., Conclusions: Determining whether a tienda-based intervention can improve customers' FV purchasing and consumption will provide key evidence for how to create healthier consumer food environments., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Heroin overdose, more accurately termed ‘heroin-related overdose’ due to the frequent involvement of other drugs, is the leading cause of mortality among regular heroin users. (Degenhardt et al., 2010) Heroin injectors are at greater risk of hospital admission for heroin-related overdose (HOD) in the eastern United States where Colombian-sourced powder heroin is sold than in the western US where black ‘tar’ heroin predominates. (Unick et al., 2014) This paper examines under-researched influences on HOD, both fatal and non-fatal, using data from a qualitative study of injecting drug users of black tar heroin in San Francisco and powder heroin in Philadelphia Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews carried out in 2012 that were conducted against a background of longer-term participant-observation, ethnographic studies of drug users and dealers in Philadelphia (2007–12) and of users in San Francisco (1994–2007, 2012). Our findings suggest three types of previously unconsidered influences on overdose risk that arise both from structural socio-economic factors and from the physical properties of the heroin source-types: 1) retail market structure including information flow between users; 2) marketing techniques such as branding, free samples and pricing and 3) differences in the physical characteristics of the two major heroin source forms and how they affect injecting techniques and vascular health. Although chosen for their contrasting source-forms, we found that the two cities have contrasting dominant models of drug retailing: San Francisco respondents tended to buy through private dealers and Philadelphia respondents frequented an open-air street market where heroin is branded and free samples are distributed, although each city included both types of drug sales. These market structures and marketing techniques shape the availability of information regarding heroin potency and its dissemination among users who tend to seek out the strongest heroin available on a given day. The physical characteristics of these two source-types, the way they are prepared for injecting and their effects on vein health also differ markedly. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the unexplored factors that may lead to heroin-related overdose in the United States and to generate hypotheses for further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) have rapidly become the most commonly used tobacco product among youth in the United States. Exposure to advertising, peer use, and household use, increases the risk of current e-cigarette use; however, the influence of these factors may be dynamic across adolescence. The aim of this study is to examine the age-varying associations between e-cigarette use and peer use, household use, and exposure to e-cigarette commercials among alternative high school students in Southern California. METHODS Using data previously collected for a tobacco marketing study, we examine the age-varying associations of current e-cigarette use and three risk factors (peer use, exposure to commercials, and household use) across ages 15 to 20 years using time-varying effect modeling (TVEM). Analyses include three waves of data from alternative high school students (N=1060 students; 2036 observations). RESULTS The probability of e-cigarette use gradually increased over the age of 15 years and then decreased by the age of 17 years for females and after the age of 18 years for males. Significant gender differences were observed between the ages of 17 and 19.5 years. Peer e-cigarette use was associated with higher odds of current e-cigarette use across all ages for females and after the age of 16 years for males. Exposure to e-cigarette commercials increased current use significantly for males between the ages of 16 and 18 years. Household use increased the odds of current use of e-cigarettes between the ages of 17 and 19 years for males and under 16.5 and over 18 years for females. CONCLUSIONS The findings highlight the utility of TVEM in understanding the risk factors of e-cigarette use and suggest that these factors are dynamic across adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Tobacco marketing influences tobacco use initiation, maintenance of use, and it undermines comprehensive tobacco control programmes. Policies to ban the impact of tobacco marketing are most likely to be more effective if they are comprehensive, as partial bans shift marketing to non-banned forms of media. A comprehensive approach to reducing tobacco marketing includes documentation through monitoring, media and policy interventions and aggressive enforcement of existing laws., Methods: This paper summarises California tobacco industry monitoring of events and retail outlets, and findings about exposure to and beliefs about tobacco industry marketing among youths and adults conducted during the period 2000 through 2008., Results: There was no overall change in the average number of cigarette materials per store, and an increase in the percentage of stores with advertisements promoting price discounts for cigarettes. Stores with cigarette advertisements near candy displays declined from 12.5% (95% CI 9.8% to 15.2%) to 1% (95% CI 0.2% to 1.9%) of stores, and advertisements at or below the eye-level of children declined from 78.6% (95% CI 75.2% to 82.0%) to 31% (95% CI 27.1% to 34.9%) of stores. Overall, the number of public events with tobacco sponsorship declined from 77.3% to 48.1%. This trend was consistent with a significant decline noted among high school students and adults who reported seeing tobacco advertisements at events or attending a tobacco company-sponsored event., Conclusions: Tobacco industry monitoring, media, policy and enforcement interventions may have contributed to observed changes in tobacco marketing and to declines in reported exposure to tobacco marketing.

INTRODUCTION This study characterizes the retail environment for Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS) near public universities in California, assesses marketing in the first random sample of ENDS retailers, and compares ENDS retailer density and retail marketing near campuses with and without tobacco-free policies. METHODS Two data sources were used to construct a sampling frame of possible ENDS retailers, which were mapped within 1-4 miles of 33 campuses of the University of California and the California State University systems. To assess retailer density, a telephone survey of possible ENDS retailers (n=1186) determined who sold e-cigarettes or e-liquids (completion rate=72.9%). To assess retail marketing, trained data collectors completed observations in a random sample (n=438, mean M=13.3 stores per campus, SD=11.2) in the Fall of 2015. RESULTS In a telephone survey, 59.1% of retailers reported selling e-cigarettes or e-liquids. Half of the campuses had 10 or more ENDS retailers nearby. Most ENDS retailers were convenience stores (42.5%), and more were head shops (8.4%) than smoke shops (6.8%) or vape shops (6.2%). Nearly half (43.6%) of ENDS retailers sold products marketed as zero-nicotine and 13.9% sold NRT. ENDS advertising was visible in 72.4% and on the exterior of 28.1% of retailers. However, the presence of exterior advertising for ENDS was significantly lower near campuses with established tobacco-free policies than near campuses with recent or no tobacco-free policies (OR=0.45, 95% CI: 0.22-0.94). CONCLUSIONS The large number of tobacco retailers that sell ENDS near colleges suggests a need for better monitoring and regulation of ENDS availability and marketing. The widespread availability of zero-nicotine products suggests a need to examine whether nicotine-free products are as advertised and safe to use. Longitudinal research is needed to understand how retail marketing for ENDS responds to change in tobacco-free policies at nearby campuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the use of the set theoretic model of organizations developed by Mackenzie in the study of complex market organizations. Part one briefly outlines the mathematical development of Mackenzie's model. Part two describes the organization and structure of the wood products market in Los Angeles within the framework of this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Many cannabis dispensaries market and sell their products online through websites designed to attract and maintain customers; often, these websites incorporate a variety of product claims and other marketing tactics. This study evaluated website content, product pricing and discounts on dispensary websites in California and Nevada, states that legalized recreational cannabis in 2016. Methods: We content coded product availability, marketing claims and discounts on cannabis dispensary websites in the San Francisco Bay Area (N = 34) and Reno (N = 15) from March to June 2020 using a web crawler to scrape pricing information for four product types. We conducted bivariate analyses comparing both locations. Results: Prices were significantly lower for flower, edibles, and concentrates in Reno compared to the Bay Area, but not cartridges. In both areas, a range of marketing claims were made regarding the health effects of certain products. The most common were that cannabis products treated pain, nausea/vomiting, spasms, anxiety, insomnia, and depression. Products were also said to promote creativity and euphoria. Other marketing claims related to potency, pleasure enhancement, and improved social interactions. Discounts targeted to senior citizens and veterans were found on over half of all websites. Conclusions: Dispensary websites in the Bay Area and Reno frequently make health-related claims which should not be allowed in absence of scientific evidence. Non-health related claims are similar to those used for selling e-cigarettes and other tobacco products. Monitoring cannabis dispensary websites provides insight into local sales tactics and may help identify subpopulations for research on behavioral impacts of cannabis marketing activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Although the FDA prohibits using inaccurate, reduced-risk descriptors on tobacco product advertising, descriptors that imply reduced risk or an enhanced user experience may be present on cigar product advertising in retail outlets near schools. Therefore, to inform the development of federal labeling and advertising requirements that reduce youth appeal of cigars, we conducted a content analysis of cigar ads in retailers near schools to document the presence of implied health claims and other selling propositions that may convey enhanced smoking experience.Aims and Methods: Up to four interior and exterior little cigar and cigarillo advertisements were photographed in a random sample of licensed tobacco retailers (n = 530) near California middle and high schools. Unique ads (n = 234) were coded for brand, flavor, and presence of implicit health claims, premium branding descriptors, and sensory descriptors. Logistic regressions assessed the association among flavored ads and presence of implicit health claims, premium branding, or sensory descriptors.Results: Seventeen cigar brands were advertised near schools; Black & Mild (20.1%) and Swisher Sweets (20.1%) were most common. Flavor was featured in 64.5% of ads, with explicit flavor names (eg, grape) being more prevalent than ambiguous names (eg, Jazz) (49.6% vs. 34.2%). Compared to ads without flavors, ads with ambiguous flavors were more likely to feature implicit health claims (OR = 1.83, 95% CI = 1.06% to 3.19%) and sensory descriptors (OR = 2.64, 95% CI = 1.39% to 5.04%); ads with explicit flavors were more likely to feature premium branding (OR = 2.84, 95% CI = 1.53% to 5.41%).Conclusions: Cigar ads that featured implicit health claims and premium branding, and sensory selling propositions are present at retailer stores near schools.Implications: We document the presence of implied health claims, premium branding, and sensory descriptors on cigar ads found in retail settings near schools. This study adds to the body of evidence that supports the development of federal labeling and advertising requirements for cigar products to reduce their appeal among vulnerable groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the economic growth, industrial trends and future of California and the Pacific Coast region of the United States. The market is described as benefitting from the war industries of aircraft and shipbuilding and population growth, but also having great potential. The production growth of the iron, steel and steel related industries in California are tracked. Industries with local markets and national markets are discussed. According to the author, California's economic development in the periods before and after World War II has been faster than the rest of the United States.

The article discusses the process by which prices are set for the egg market in Los Angeles, California at the time of publication. The author notes the role of the Produce Exchange of Los Angeles in determining egg prices. A chart depicting exchange quotations of prices is presented. Elements of pricing determined by egg size and grade are also discussed. According to the author, the United States Department of Agriculture plays a role in the price of eggs by quoting prices of case lots delivered to retail stores and restaurants.

The article presents an analysis of California farm marketing cooperative associations. Several cooperatives are examined and the article compares their organizational structure, sales policies, internal relations, and external relations. Organizations differ in that some are centralized, while others exhibit a localized governance structure. In terms of pricing, some feature fixed prices or fluctuating prices, while others have guaranteed cost or guaranteed return. Middlemen characterize the buying conditions for some organizations, while others are marked by monopolies.