United For Health: Community Engagement Strategies to Support Food Innovation, Equity, and Community Economic Development as a Prevention Strategy in Los Angeles

Los Angeles is a global city that attracts industry, people, and wealth. The city is also a place where intractable social problems like poverty, food insecurity, and health disparities run rampant. Community Health Councils (CHC), a community-based non-profit health policy organization in South Los Angeles and a consortium of community organizations known as United for Health (UH) are working in partnership with public officials, other community-based organizations and area residents to transform that reality. Using evidence-based policy, programmatic, environmental and systems changes, UH partners have been able to leverage skills, expertise, resources, and community relationships to influence health policy and drive toward health equity in the communities of Boyle Heights, Central Los Angeles, Pacoima, South Los Angeles, and Wilmington. Using community-based participatory research, including community forums and innovative approaches to engagement, United for Health has been able to advance strategies that focus on prevention as a tool for catalytic investment that support equitable access to healthy choices in Los Angeles.  Through its multi-sectorial collaborative, UH partners have been able to advance strategies that include: (1) increased EBT access at farmers markets; (2) improved land-use and community design standards to support health; and (3) a community toolkit that helps support food innovation and economic development grounded in community. Together, UH partners and the five communities they represent are at the forefront of creating a new vision for their community and paving the way for new ways of organizing and strategizing to make lasting change that addresses health inequities in Los Angeles.