The Local Initiatives Support Corporation New York City (LISC NYC) has launched a three-year pilot program to help low-income families in New York live longer and healthier by expanding access to healthy food in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Called Communities for Healthy Food NYC, the new program connects to broader LISC NYC efforts to revitalize struggling communities and improve overall quality of life. It focuses both on locating healthy food outlets in places without them and educating residents about nutrition, food preparation and overall health.

Growing Home is one of Chicago's larger urban farming projects, much of it located in Englewood, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. This article and photo essay discusses the idea that urban farms have less to do with providing healthy food and are more about a reclamation of sorts, taking ownership of a community and the daily lives of the people.

Greater prosperity in Bradford and the rest of Vermont will require better access to health care, food, workforce development and education.That was the conclusion of a local panel of experts, as well as many audience members who attended the first Campaign for Vermont (CFV) public forum. CFV is a statewide, independent and non-partisan “ideas campaign.” It now has more than 350 partners, and has published prosperity-minded position papers on energy, education, health care and employment.

In May of 2012, the USDA announced new grant funding through the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2012 to increase SNAP access at farmers markets. $4 million was appropriated for the purchase or rental of a wireless device and related SNAP fees for markets. The purpose of the funds is to increase the availability of  point-of-sale (POS) equipment in farmers markets not currently participating in SNAP. This fact sheet provides guidance on how to obtain the funds and clarifications regarding eligibility and process. 

It has become an article of faith among some policy makers and advocates, including Michelle Obama, that poor urban neighborhoods are food deserts, bereft of fresh fruits and vegetables. But two new studies have found something unexpected. Such neighborhoods not only have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores than more affluent ones, but more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants, too. And there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents.

The hottest trend in the grocery business might just be setting up shop in food deserts. Since 2010, when Rahm Emanuel adopted the issue during his mayoral campaign, big retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Walgreen Co. have made well-publicized commitments to build stores in underserved neighborhoods in Chicago and other urban centers.

This toolkit from ChangeLab Solutions provides a range of tools and strategies for advocates to identify and work with prospective WIC vendors, and to help these retailers upgrade their offerings in accordance with the new, healthier WIC food packages.

This Altarum Institute Policy Roundtable examined innovative approaches, including financial incentives, to encourage healthy food choices by SNAP program participants. We also examined the added economic benefit that can occur when more SNAP dollars are spent on local food and circulate in the local economy.  Speakers from Altarum’s Center for Food Assistance and Nutrition, the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Fair Food Network, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation discussed what is being tested, and what is known to be working, in this critical effort to improve health status through healthier food purchases supported by SNAP.

This report highlights exciting trends in the Fair Food Network's Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) program. DUFB provides low-income consumers who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funds (formerly known as food stamps) with the means to purchase more locally grown produce by matching up to $20 spent per market visit at participating sites. Highlights from the evaluation include increased purchasing of fruits and vegetables amoung consumers and an economic boost at farmers' markets.

The Reinvestment Funds’s (TRF) New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program funds community and economic development projects in distressed communities by leveraging private-sector equity and loan capital investment into community development projects to stimulate economic growth and create jobs in the areas that most need it. TRF’s allocations have provided a combination of debt and equity to three project types, each in highly distressed areas in the mid-Atlantic: charter schools, full service supermarkets, and other commercial and mixed-use developments. This fact sheet highlights some examples of their food access projects: