Across the country local stakeholders are adopting methods and strategies to improve access to healthy foods by advocating for policy change. This webinar uses The Food Trust’s recently published Healthy Food Financing Handbook: From Advocacy to Implementation to discuss how these efforts have led to the creation of healthy food financing initiatives at the city, state and federal level. This webinar offers a roadmap for how to successfully advocate for initiatives that improve access to healthy food through the development of healthy food retail. Additionally, the webinar provides an overview of how healthy food financing initiatives are administered by government agencies, community development financial institutions, and food access organizations. 

PolicyLink and The Food Trust present The Grocery Gap, the most comprehensive review of studies of healthy food access and its impacts, reaffirming that access to healthy food is a critical component of healthy, thriving communities:

• The Grocery Gap: Who Has Access to Healthy Food and Why It Matters (2010): The first groundbreaking report in 2010 reviewed 132 studies conducted in the United States in the past 20 years.
• Access to Healthy Food and Why It Matters: A Review of Research (2013): An update of the original report, this edition drew upon more than 170 studies, published between 2010 and 2013, in an attempt to synthesize and present the latest research on healthy food access and identify where gaps may still exist since the first report.

The New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program incentivizes private investment in low-income communities by permitting individual and corporate investors to receive a tax credit against their federal income tax return in exchange for making equity investments in specialized financial institutions called Community Development Entities (CDEs). The NMTC program has a proven track record in expanding access to healthy foods by encouraging private sector investment in underserved communities. This webinar serves as an introduction to a complex financing tool and explores some examples of how NMTCs are being used to finance a variety of projects designed to improve access to healthy foods.

Too many residents of bi-state Kansas City lack sufficient access to healthy, affordable food. Despite being in the heart of one of the richest agricultural regions in the nation, bi-state Kansas City is home to many communities without supermarkets, grocery stores and other retailers of healthy food. Limited access to nutritious food is an issue in specific neighborhoods, such as Douglas Sumner in Kansas City, Kansas, and Ivanhoe and Marlborough in Kansas City, Missouri. To address these concerns, the Kansas City Grocery Access Task Force was convened by KC Healthy Kids, IFF and The Food Trust. The task force is a cohort of leaders from the grocery industry, state and local governments, as well as the community and economic development, public health and civic sectors. The task force developed nine recommendations for state and local public policies that will improve the availability of healthy, affordable food in underserved areas through the development of supermarkets and grocery stores.

Illustrates the connection between improved healthy food access and resulting economic and community development, encouraging readers to include assessment of economic outcomes in their healthy food access research agenda, and provides evidence to support decision makers in advancing healthy food policies.

This guide, developed by ChangeLab Solutions, provides a general overview of economic development and ideas for how to approach economic development agencies with healthy food retail proposals. It also provides a comprehensive overview of local, state, and federal economic development programs that have been or could be used for healthy food retail projects.

A resource for communities, businesses, not-for-profits, and others interested in establishing food hubs. This guide includes descriptions of key functions, best practices, and “how-to” strategies for food hub establishment and operation that are based on successful models operating in other regions that have been specifically adapted for application in Illinois.

This reports includes policy recommendations to stimulate healthy food retail development in Minnesota to improve healthy food access in underserved communities throughout the state.

This report includes policy recommendations to stimulate healthy food retail development in Tennessee to improve healthy food access in underserved communities throughout the state.