Proviso Partners for Health: A Multi-sector Coalition Advancing Action on Obesity

Introduction: Individual efforts to reduce obesity in low-income African American communities have shown limited success because of the lack of access to affordable healthy foods. An alternative public health approach is to create healthy food and activity environments. The Proviso Partners for Health is a multi-sector coalition to reduce and prevent childhood obesity through policy, systems, and environmental strategies that could improve the healthy food environment.  The coalition consists of the health sector, schools, after-school programs, as well as partners from local businesses, and food retail outlets. Coalition partners work in four groups to address policy related to food access, education, and job opportunities, all of which contribute to obesity.

Approach: A community-based participatory approach is used and we identify the implementation, evaluation, and community impact using the spectrum of prevention framework.  Policy strategies include establishing entrepreneurial gardens which have multi-level benefits for low-income communities. Gardens provide access to food, reinforce nutrition education, and can become a career pathway to jobs in the food system.  Community kitchen strategies can provide healthy cooking programs for families and be a site to prepare, distribute, and sell locally grown food.

Results: Findings describe the organizational and community level impacts from the Proviso Partners for Health coalition.

Discussion: We discuss successes and challenges in leveraging resources and implementing policy to increase access to affordable healthy food environments, reduce obesity, and create career opportunities for local youth.