Human Services News

From washingtonpost.com :

The Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, leveraging $30 million in state money with $90 million in private funds, is the most ambitious of a spate of state and local projects around the country.

They represent a different model for public nutrition programs, which have relied since the 1960s on federal subsidies, such as food stamps and WIC.

Healthful food is scarce in many inner-city neighborhoods, where much of the food comes from corner markets and greasy takeout places.

Instead of subsidizing shoppers, the projects shift the emphasis to the private sector, offering coaching and financial inducements for grocers to go into areas they shunned for decades.

These initiatives grow out of new research exploring the relationship among proximity to fresh food, the nation's obesity epidemic and diseases such as diabetes that are affected by diet.

"We tried to make the connection between grocery stores and public health," said R. Duane Perry, executive director of the Food Trust, a nonprofit group that, in a pioneering 2002 study, produced maps showing that low-income neighborhoods of Philadelphia with few or no supermarkets had high death rates from diet-related diseases.

A study in Chicago, released three months ago, measured the distance from every city block to the nearest grocery store and fast-food restaurant.

It found that people in what it called Chicago's "food deserts" died early in greater numbers and had more diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure.

Such public health discoveries -- combined with an older view of supermarkets as tools of economic development -- have been spurring new policies around the country.

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