Developing community capacity to increase the availability of healthy foods in corner stores

In 2010, the suburban Cook County, IL, Communities Putting Prevention to Work initiative (CPPW) commissioned a report on food access in suburban Cook County. The report identified a number of suburbs with low access to stores selling a variety of healthy foods. In response, the initiative developed a healthy corner store project to improve the availability of healthy foods in existing stores. Due to the size and sprawl of suburban Cook County, the project worked through local community institutions in ten municipalities to recruit corner stores and promote changes. This required training and support of the community-based staff partnering on the project. At the end of the project a program evaluation included interviews with key community staff working on the project in their communities. The evaluation found that training and project materials were helpful. The support of county CPPW initiative staff was particularly helpful to local partners. All partnering institutions faced organizational capacity limitations and staff worked part-time on the project. Institutions that had more financial or staffing uncertainty leaned more heavily on CPPW initiative staff for support. At the end of the project, three of the 8 partnering institutions were planning ways to continue with the project, or were looking for new funding to expand it in their service areas.