GETTING HEALTHY WILL REQUIRE

Policy Change

Existing research provides clear evidence that food deserts exist in numerous low-income communities and communities of color across the country, and that they have significant negative impacts on health, social equity, and local economic development. The balance of the research strongly suggests that making affordable, healthy foods more available to under served residents will lead to their making healthier choices about what to eat and, ultimately, better health, while contributing to economic and neighborhood revitalization.

While there is general agreement in the literature about the lack of access to healthy foods and increasing evidence about its consequences, fewer researchers have focused on the question of what are the most effective solutions. This search has largely been taken up by impacted communities and their advocates and supporters. Across the country, they are:

• Attracting or developing grocery stores and supermarkets;

• Developing other retail outlets such as farmers’ markets, public markets, cooperatives, farm stands, community supported agriculture programs, and mobile vendors (and ensuring public benefits can be used at these venues);

• Increasing the stock of fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods at neighborhood corner stores or small groceries;

• Growing food locally through backyard and community gardens and larger scale urban agriculture; and

• Improving transportation to grocery stores and farmers’ markets.

Communities are using a variety of strategies to increase access to healthy foods, and their efforts provide several lessons for policymakers at the local, state, and federal level.

Until more systemic solutions are instituted, transportation barriers to fresh food markets need to be removed. Community groups and planners should evaluate existing transportation routes and improve coordination of bus routes, bus stops, and schedules or add van pools or shuttles to maximize transit access to grocery stores and farmers’ markets.

Longer-term transportation and land use planning should promote the co-location of food retail, transit access, and affordable homes. Communities and retailers can launch programs such as mobile markets, grocery shuttles, and grocery van delivery to improve access to healthy food. Community groups, residents, researchers, and government agencies should work together to identify areas that lack access to healthy food and to understand local economic conditions and regional food systems. Areas lacking access should be prioritized, strategies for action need to identified, and then advocates need to demand the resources, programs, and policies to solve the access problem.

Once underway, efforts should be monitored to examine progress over time, and advocates should seek the expansion of successful approaches.   Cities have many policy tools they can use to incentivize and promote healthy food retail including land use planning, zoning, economic development and redevelopment, and nutrition assistance. A recent analysis of retailers’ location decisions found that the land availability, market demand (and data demonstrating that demand), construction and operations costs, and approval/zoning requirements all pose barriers to locating in underserved urban areas.

Cities can help overcome these barriers by providing publicly owned land for food retailers, helping with land assembly, and identifying and marketing sites for grocery store development. Several cities have conducted internal assessments to understand how their agencies and departments can foster healthy food retail in under served neighborhoods.

Successful policies and programs need to be replicated and brought to a greater scale to increase healthy food access. A problem with such broad and negative impacts on health, economy, and equity warrants a focus at all levels—community, state, and national. Now is the time for bold, nationwide efforts to ensure that healthy food choices are available to all.

So after reading this what do you think about the policies to remove certain foods from the shelves? According this when presented with a healthy choice most often people will make the better choice of fuel. So where is the government in all of this? The quiet is deafening when it comes to the topic of our poor health directly caused by the foods that are denied to poorer communities. As a result we often choose what is available and if you are poor whether urban or rural, it is unlikely the best fuels will be available.

It is funny when you set out to do one thing and find yourself being drawn to a broader topic. I believe it will probably become what propels me to get involved again since it will take more than my blog to demand this issue is addressed. I know this is as major a long term threat as there is to the future of our communities and our country as any that exist. Our government allows the lobbyist pay for the policies that are in their monetary best interest without one concern for what happens to you and I. Look around you, “Are you better off?” In the context of health, the answer is a definitive and loud No!

Question is what do we do about it? Well first you need to get involved and educate yourself. Second share the information with your family and friends and encourage them to do something different. Third use the tools available to contact your local legislators and attend the community meetings to voice your concern. We cannot sit back and wait. Our health is getting worse and we are ingesting more chemicals in order to merely function. So Get Up Get Moving, to improve your health and the health of your community.

Remember, “CHIT CHAT WON’T BURN FAT”