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Abstract #148648

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Allison Harris, BA and Allison Karpyn, PhD. The Food Trust, 1201 Chestnut Street, 4th Fl, Philadelphia, PA 19107, 215-568-0830, aharris@thefoodtrust.org

Americans struggle to eat the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables and for residents with lower-incomes, inadequate access to affordable fresh produce presents an even greater challenge. Food cupboards work hard to “fill bellies” but many realize that in order to meet the needs of their clients a greater emphasis on providing healthy foods is necessary. Establishing and maintaining sources for the year round procurement of fresh produce is a challenge for food cupboards whose resources are stretched to the limit as they try to meet the growing demand for services. Results from a 15 month intervention demonstrate that enhanced collaboration among emergency food providers, achieved through the development of a coalition, produced several creative approaches to securing fresh and healthy food for those who needed it most. Community education, fresh food drives, and partnerships with food retailers, farmers and community gardeners generated more than a half ton of fresh food for emergency food providers and established replicable methods for procuring fresh foods. Measures of collaboration, food inventory, caloric consumption and relative cost are discussed.

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss the current status of integration of fresh food into the emergency food system in one Philadelphia suburb
• Describe approaches to integrating fresh, helathy food into the emergency food system.
• Define changes in availability of healthier items as a result of program implementation

Keywords: Access, Environmental Health

Related Web page: www.thefoodtrust.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No
Any institutionally-contracted trials related to this submission?

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

• Slides (pdf) or Handout