Prevention strategies and structural changes that matter: Insights into food insecurity and the informal food system from Comida Casera, a project of Salud Familiar en McKinley

Food deserts can exist minutes or miles from neighborhoods rich with resources, choices, and cuisines. Salud Familiar en McKinley is a community-university partnership designed to co-create the cultures, confidence, environments, and resources for health in the low-income, immigrant Latino community of McKinley Elementary School in California's Silicon Valley. Although the region is famous for the innovation and fresh ingredients that made California Cuisine famous, McKinley families too often found it too difficult to secure fresh fruits and vegetables, access food programs, or otherwise make food choices that enhance family health and wellness. A 2011 initiative of Salud Familiar, Comida Casera (homemade food), allowed a deep exploration of the lived experience of food insecurity and systematic mapping of the local food environment. The result was a detailed view of the formal food system (i.e., school meal programs) and a far more influential informal food system (food that is made, shared, and sold among neighbors). Further community-based, participatory research documented hidden but significant barriers to accessing a food distribution site only two miles away, barriers rooted in the social and built environments, and the complex role of pushcart vendors who, while promoting junk food, play an important safety role in the social ecology of the school. Community organizing based on these results led to a set of multi-tiered interventions. The inquiry and interventions were framed within the context of familia, respeto, comunidad, and dignidad that are central to Salud Familiar en McKinley. Implications for practice, research, and policy will be discussed.