Oral

Panel Overview: Eating healthy foods provides numerous health benefits, yet limited availability of healthy food options remains a problem in some communities across the country. This session will share efforts from four recipients of Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) and Community Transformation Grants (CTG) funding to improve the food environment in community settings such as workplaces and food retailers. Massachusetts Department of Public Health will describe their use of surveillance data to formulate and prioritize interventions; Mid America Regional Council, MO and Los Angeles County will discuss their vending policies and nutritional guidelines implementation, respectively; and San Diego County will illustrate their food systems approach to enhance coordination and efficiencies to deliver healthy local foods. Communities will share lessons learned across an array of strategies to monitor and increase availability and accessibility to healthy foods, including surveillance, systems approaches, and population-level interventions. Relevance and Importance: Healthy food options remain limited in some communities, particularly in populations experiencing health disparities. Systems- and population-level interventions have the potential to improve and sustain availability and accessibility of healthy foods for populations in underserved areas. Assessment and evaluation of these interventions allows communities to share lessons learned and best practices for strategically targeting interventions and improving implementation efforts.

Session Objectives: 1. By the end of this session, participants will be able to identify successful approaches using systems and population-level interventions to enhance food environments. 2. By the end of this session, participants will be able to explain communities’ use of surveillance data and evaluation to demonstrate needed changes in food systems, and identify population-level and system changes that have addressed those needs.