Twin Cities Mobile Market is a grocery store on wheels that brings affordable, healthy food directly into underserved neighborhoods. It fills a gap between food pantries and full-service supermarkets by providing a wide selection of fresh foods at below-market prices. Leah Driscoll was finishing her master's thesis paper on urban food deserts when she came up with the idea to create a mobile grocery store for the Twin Cities, she said in a local newspaper article, while also working for the Wilder Foundation. But the idea became a reality after her idea won $41,000 from the 2013 Colonial Church Social Enterprise Competition. Their project also received a federal grant from the Healthy Food Financing Initiative which helped to fund the purchasing of the bus and they partnered ...
The City of Sioux Falls was recently ranked as one of the cities with the worst rates of daily recommended fruit and vegetable consumption. Public health advocates in this South Dakota city with a growing Latino population want to figure out why folks aren't eating healthy and how to encourage them to do so. Live Well Sioux Falls, a community-based initiative designed to help improve the health and well-being of Sioux Falls residents, announced in early August that they received a $25,000 grant from the Wellmark Foundation to help study issues related to the accessibility and affordability of healthy foods in the city. Working with South Dakota State University Extension and the newly formed Sioux Falls Food Council, Live Well Sioux Falls plans to identify needs in the ...
A hospital is a place for healing illness, and promoting health for new moms. However, many hospitals across the country still offer a wide range of sugary drinks in vending machines, gift shops, and cafeterias. Latino kids on average drink more of these sugary drinks their White peers. One hospital in Boston used a beverage policy to not only help patients make healthy drink choices, but also hospital administration, staff, patients’ families, and the local community.
The Obesity Crisis
Dorchester is a diverse inner-city community in Boston, Mass., where almost 20% of residents are Latino. Many of Dorchester’s low-income, high-risk factor patients get their medical care at Carney Hospital, a member of Steward Health Care, the largest fully integrated community care ...
It doesn't have to be a challenge for corner stores to offer healthy items. In fact, many corner stores already sell healthy snacks like fruits, baked chips, and nuts, but they are hard to find and out of view of customers. A corner store in Durham, SC, where over 13% of residents are Latino, has partnered with the Durham County Department of Public Health to make their healthier options more attractive to customers. Express Mart, a corner store in North Durham, hopes to increase access to healthy foods in a neighborhood with few healthy options. When costumers walk into the store, they will find bright labels making the “good for you” items easy to find and a basket of fresh fruit at the register to encourage healthy eating. The team took it a step further by replacing ...
One reason many Latino families across the country don't have healthy foods at home is they lack access to stores that stock fresh items. Getting fresh produce into stores is linked to helping kids eat healthier. Knowing this, CSX, a national supplier of rail-based freight transportation, has teamed up with The Conservation Fund, a non-profit, and announced a program of grants aimed at improving the transportation and distribution of fresh, healthy food to communities in need. Grants will be made available to entities that distribute fresh produce and/or perishable food in the 23 states where CSX operates. The grants can support a range of activities related to transportation such as: -Acquiring refrigerated vehicles for direct delivery to markets;
-Financing “veggie ...
Last week, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and Aramark food services company launched “Home Plate,” a research study that will seek to enhance the health and well-being of families by teaching parents how to cook healthy meals at home. The Home Plate program will include improving access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and giving people cooking skills to turn that access to healthy foods into healthier diets. Home Plate will operate as part of CHOP’s Healthy Weight program. The cooking sessions will occur at The Enterprise Center in West Philadelphia. If the study proves successful, hospital officials believe it will lay the foundation for a “low-cost, sustainable model that can be replicated in community-based organizations across the country,” ...
In South Sacramento many families, including Latino families, don't have easy access to full-service grocery stores, leaving them with few healthy food options. The Sacramento County Health Department is partnering with a local developer and a Shell gas station in South Sacramento to build a convenience store inside the gas station that would sell fresh fruits, vegetables, and more. According to a local government news site, fifteen percent of the retail space in the convenience store will display fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and potentially, healthy meats such as fish. These foods will be displayed in the front of the store, near the check-out stand, where patrons will see ...
State parks are great places to get active and enjoy the outdoors, but junk food sold at state parks can send mixed messages. The Michigan Environmental Council recently partnered with the Healthy Kids, Healthy Michigan coalition to study how easy it is to get healthy foods in state parks and whether visitors want them. The study found that while many visitors would like to have healthier options, the current options in vending machines, concession stands, and at camp stores are far from healthy. In fact, 86% of the snacks at concession stands were in the lowest nutritional quality category and only 1% were of high nutritional value. The study also found that soft drinks were 63% of the the less-healthy options in the machines. Water represented 41% of the healthy ...
Latino kids drink more sugary drinks a day than their White peers, which increases their risk of diabetes and other chronic diseases. Many cities and states have considered placing a tax on drinks with excess sugar as one way to reduce consumption and raise money for kid-focused healthy living programs. The Alliance for a Healthier Vermont is gearing-up to push for a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages and has hired Anthony Iarrapino, formally with the Conservation Law Foundation, to shepherd the initiative through the Legislature next year.
Public health advocates in Vermont have tried to pass a tax on sugary drinks before, but they are hoping to be more successful in the 2015 legislative session. The Alliance for a Healthier Vermont is made up of more than 30 health care ...
