240460 Farm bill budget visualization project: A “treemap” tool for understanding and analysis

Monday, October 31, 2011

Roni A. Neff, PhD, MS , Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Desmond Flagg, MPH , Center for a Livable Future, The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
No other single piece of legislation has a more profound effect upon the U.S. food environment than the Farm Bill. Due to its comprehensiveness, complexity, and size, understanding the Farm Bill can be an arduous task, especially for public health professionals whose expertise often lies outside of agricultural policy and economics.

The Farm Bill Budget Visualization Project presents the entire Farm Bill budget in an interactive “treemap” format. This presentation will use the treemap to analyze how farm bill budgets are allocated, and particularly, how spending affects public health priorities such as healthy food production and access, community food security, and food animal production..

The ultimate aim of this project is to generate and support discussion of how public health goals can be better represented in future Farm Bills.

This presentation will be of interest to persons involved in the areas of food policy, sustainable agriculture, food security, and economics. This presentation will also be of interest for those interested in understanding the treemap methodology.

Learning Areas:
Public health or related public policy

Learning Objectives:
1. Describe the Farm Bill budget 2. Visually depict sizes of different farm bill components that affect public health 3. Share the treemap as a model of a way to present budgets and other hierarchical information

Keywords: Food and Nutrition, Public Health Policy

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am qualified to present because I oversee programs related to food policy and advocacy.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

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.

See more of: Food Policy and Nutrition Programs for Food Insecure and Other Special Populations
See more of: Food and Nutrition