Increasing Access to Healthy Food. Policy and Advocacy Approaches to Addressing the Obesity Epidemic

Over the past four decades, obesity rates have soared among all age groups. Today, nearly one-third of children and adolescents in the United States are either overweight or obese.  We now understand that the places we live impact our ability to engage in healthy lifestyles like walking and eating healthy foods.  Public health professionals and planners have begun to collaborate in supporting the development of healthy places, spaces and policies across the county.

This session will focus on access to healthy food. Through the American Heart Association and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Voices for Healthy Kids Initiative, our state leaders and national experts like the Food Trust are on the front lines of the childhood obesity movement in engaging and inspiring communities to mount campaigns to increase the number of healthy food outlets (grocery stores, farmers’ markets and corner stores), in underserved communities.  This session will bring together key partners from those campaigns to share best practices and reflect on lessons learned.  We will highlight work being done across the county with emphasis on our southern regional strategy and will present a case study on New Jersey where they are leading efforts to increase the supply of affordable fresh food in underserved urban areas. We hope to explore a variety of tools such as mapping studies that highlight food desserts throughout the state, creation of innovative financing initiatives to provide low-cost loans and grants, and development of non-traditional coalitions that support these efforts.