PolicyLink Releases New Report “Healthy Food, Healthy Communities”
27. Jul, 2011 
1 Comment
Last Wednesday, First Lady Michelle Obama announced a groundbreaking public-private partnership that has the potential to significantly increase healthy food access in underserved areas, particularly in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.
Today PolicyLink released the new report, Healthy Food, Healthy Communities: Promising Strategies to Improve Access to Fresh, Healthy Food and Transform Communities, taking a closer look at the impact of this access gap and ongoing strategies to develop new grocery stores, and help existing grocers, farmers markets, bodegas, corner stores and other local food retailers expand their healthy food choices.
Here are additional ways to support or stay informed about healthy food access:
- Read this Roll Call op-ed by PolicyLink and the National Grocers Association on the health and economic benefits of improving healthy food access.
- Get occasional updates on efforts to create a Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) that would provide one-time loans, grants, and tax credits to support a range of healthy food retail options in underserved low-income communities across the nation.
- Email your legislator directly to ask them to support HFFI.
Author Info
I think that supporting existing small, independent corner stores in low-income urban areas is the best approach to the issue of food access. If people are already used to shopping right in their neighborhoods, this means that there will be no need for people to change their habits; and as well all know, behavior change, especially on a wide scale, is DIFFICULT. Bringing healthier food "to the people" is a logical, sustainable policy. Larger grocery stores are great source of a wide variety of fresh foods; however, inner cities normally do not have the space or transportation options to make building a supermarket feasible. Furthermore, a happy side effect of helping smaller stores to fund ways to stock fresh foods is that this type of policy supports local businesses, which can help to boost local economies and instill a sense of self-sufficiency and pride in store owners and residents.