Local food community engagement -
Finding and connecting with research and evidence-based strategies will help you learn from the successes and failures of others, and ensure that your resources are used efficiently and effectively. The Nutrition Box program, healthy cooking and nutrition classes, and Harvest of the Month program were all created based on existing initiatives.
IU and Lost River discussed a number of ideas and models before settling on those that fit with their vision and had support from community partners. Many types of food system data are available to address transactional and social issues.
An institutional partner such as Indiana University can be useful in gaining access and sorting through the information you need.
Secondary data sources for Orange County indicated that chronic diseases related to diet, like diabetes, were a major public health issue in Paoli. Information from local farmers indicated that produce production supply could increase to meet demand. Primary data collected by Lost River from the member-owners found that locally grown foods and a healthy food community were priorities that Lost River should be leading.
Good food is essential for health and community well-being. With these best practices as a guide, any community with leadership and an interest in a healthier, more just food system can bring partners to the table and engage in change.
We wish to acknowledge and honor the myaamiki, Lënape, Bodwéwadmik, and saawanwa people also known in the anglicized form as Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, and Shawnee , on whose ancestral homelands and resources Indiana University Bloomington is built. Home Resources Field Notes Best Practices for Community Food System Projects.
Best Practices for Community Food System Projects By: Jacob Simpson, former Community Resilience Liaison; Jodee Ellett, Community Engagement Claire Frohman, Research Associate Indiana University Sustainable Food Systems Science Friday, September 25, In localized or regionalized food systems, the primary focus is on Tiers 0—2.
The most local level of the food system is Tier 0. In this tier, we are connected in the most basic way to our food because we produce or forage it, cook or preserve it and then eat it. Tier 0 includes home and community gardens, hunting and fishing, and home food preservation. In community gardens, residents share gardening techniques and knowledge while growing food for their community in a shared setting.
By preserving homegrown foods, families have more consistent sources of healthy produce throughout the year, may reduce their food waste and costs, and may increase the security of their food supply. Direct relationships between the people who grow the food farmers and the people who eat the food consumers or eaters characterize Tier 1 of the food system.
In Tier 1, food producers are direct marketers, selling locally grown and produced foods at farmers markets, roadside stands and u-pick operations and through community supported agriculture CSA farms. Often regarded as the oldest form of commerce, farmers markets offer producers a way to sell small volumes of product at a price they set themselves.
Roadside stands and u-pick operations offer an easier form of marketing for farmers, allowing them to move products from the field to an on-farm location for sale and to invite people onto the farm to make their purchases.
CSAs offer the most complex example of a Tier 1 relationship between farmer and eater. Local residents invest in a farming operation or collective of farms, share the production risks and reap the benefits of the growing season.
The Tier 1 relationship between farmers and consumers often results in the development of lasting relationships and an exchange of knowledge that strengthens the local food system. In Tier 2, the goal is to make locally or regionally produced food products available in as many outlets as possible because not every consumer has the time, knowledge or desire for direct relationships with farmers.
Although many people enjoy participating in CSAs and farmers markets, others want the convenience of accessing locally and regionally produced foods in grocery stores, local restaurants or hospital and school food services. Some farmers prefer to produce a few products they can market in larger volumes, create niche markets or create value by developing a place-based food system.
In Tier 2, locally produced food moves from the farm, either direct-marketed by the producer or via a distributor, through different marketing channels such as grocery stores, restaurants and institutional food services, such as those in schools and hospitals. Moving food through these channels benefits consumers by providing food from a farmer in places they can access easily in many different situations.
This scaling up can require new facilities for packing, processing and bringing together food products from multiple producers. Selling to grocery stores or institutional food services often requires farmers to develop new business skills or increase their operational capacity, and can require grocers, food distributors and food service directors to adapt their purchasing processes to locate sources of locally produced foods that may only be available seasonally.
Tier 2 businesses typically embrace Tier 1 values, and their customers may be willing to pay more for adherence to these values. Products can often be traced back to the farms where they were grown, and farm identity and values are communicated to consumers through labeling and point-of-sale merchandising.
Tier 2 relationships may not be appropriate for some farmers or food-based businesses, especially those that wish to deal in larger volumes of source-verified, differentiated agricultural and food products.
Some of these opportunities and relationships can be identified in Tier 3. Efficiencies and lower prices are typically more important at this level than the values embraced in Tiers 1 and 2.
While relationships with farms are usually lost at this level, Tier 3 businesses often work to cultivate positive relationships with their customers. They can maintain brand identity as members of a group collectively selling differentiated products like organic milk or humanely raised livestock.
Nationally recognized businesses can source large volumes of consistent-quality products on which they can base their market position. A good example of Tier 3 is Vital Farms , which sources eggs from multiple family farms, and sells to Whole Foods, Schnucks, Target and other national grocery chains.
Another example is U. Foods, a food supplier with a commitment to sourcing local food. However, Tier 3 source-verified suppliers are not stipulated to any geographic location and not all can meet the high-volume needs of a national chain.
Most food that is produced and consumed in the United States does not move through Tiers 0—3. Instead, most consumers, farmers and food businesses participate in Tier 4, which is based on producing large volumes of undifferentiated commodities for global markets.
Raw and processed foods are traded within the global market and move anonymously within international trade partnerships. This tier is sometimes referred to as the conventional market and is discussed widely in extension resources. Table 1. Benefits and challenges of participation in various tiers of the food system.
Although many benefits of local food systems are common for both urban and rural communities, rural communities can uniquely benefit from a vibrant local food system. Rural areas have a historic precedence for food production — whether on farms, home gardens, or foraging — and often the knowledge and infrastructure necessary for food production is more readily available from family members, neighbors and businesses.
The history of agriculture in a community can also be used to support agritourism ventures, such as wineries and u-pick farms, and marketing of locally produced food to both residents and tourists. The increasing demand for locally produced food in urban areas provides a significant economic opportunity for rural farmers to increase food production for urban consumers located in the region.
This encourages local entrepreneurs to develop production, marketing, processing and distribution operations that capitalize on this increased demand for locally produced food.
Local leadership, governments and nonprofit organizations can play a significant role in building a strong rural local food system.
Access to fresh, healthy food can be a challenge for residents living outside city limits in more isolated areas of rural counties, with limited transportation options, fewer grocery stores and lower median incomes than other parts of the state.
Community leaders can initiate improved transportation options, encourage and support development of farmers markets and other food venues near common service sites such as WIC clinics, rural hospitals, and senior centers, and provide in-kind services to develop community gardens.
Supporting business development through policies and incentives can help new farmers in rural areas expand their businesses to reach more rural customers. Churches, garden clubs, community betterment groups and many other rural organizations can provide volunteer support for growing and sharing local food, and help develop farmers markets, community gardens and CSA operations.
A vibrant local food system can be an economic, social, healthful opportunity for rural communities. A healthy urban food system supports local and regional food producers, creates rural-urban connections, builds localized economies, often promotes environmentally sustainable food production, seeks avenues to educate people about various production types, strives to increase access to healthy foods for all community residents, and seeks ways to make healthy foods the easy choice.
A healthy urban food system addresses many aspects of urban communities and urban life. Urban planners and business development groups often incorporate farmers markets and grocery stores into new developments as community attractions.
Community organizations and health care providers advocate for healthy food projects and work to increase consumer access to fresh foods. Community governments seek new methods of building communities through support of local food production policies.
Schools have addressed healthy lifestyle education with schoolyard gardens. The business community has begun to consider how they can supply locally grown foods.
Urban dwellers have pushed for changes in city zoning ordinances to allow for agriculture production, including animal agriculture and sales. These efforts are often noted as a method of fostering community within urban or metropolitan areas.
Yet, even as interest in urban agriculture development increases, it is unrealistic to believe that urban populations will become food secure, or self-reliant, through urban production alone. Urban-rural connections continue to be vital to the health of urban food systems.
Urban populations are likely to continue developing relationships with rural food producers, and producers in rural communities are likely to continue finding market opportunities within the populations of urban communities.
Local food systems have many benefits for farmers, consumers and communities, but re-embedding food systems in local places takes a wide variety of knowledge, skills and efforts. Community input also helped identify opportunities for partnership.
UMass Memorial Medical Center. UMass Memorial Medical Center participated in a collaborative Community Health Assessment. Members provided key input on data collection tools and methods, identified additional stakeholders to engage, distributed the public survey assessing community health needs and strengths, and helped identify health trends, key factors, and priority health needs.
Having community members with food system expertise on the committee helped ensure food-related issues and stakeholders were included in each step of the process.
Data collection included local farmers market surveys, a review of community gardens and farmers markets with food assistance programs, and measures of food access and produce consumption. Community food system organizations fielded the CHA survey and participated in focus groups and interviews.
All these forms of community input identified obesity as a priority health issue and highlighted nutrition, access to healthy food, and cost of healthy food as significant factors needing more attention. The University of Vermont Medical Center. The Center for Rural Studies CRS is a nonprofit research center with food systems expertise that works with communities to address social and economic development challenges.
The University of Vermont Medical Center contracted with CRS to provide support to the CHNA community steering group throughout the CHNA process, including data collection and analysis, gathering community input and facilitation of needs prioritization.
Engage a community health coalition that includes food system stakeholders and leverage cross-sector community participation. Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital ALMH. This coalition was central to the CHNA process.
Primary data was gathered from local community organizations that participate in the coalition. Coalition members also comprised the majority of the CHNA External Advisory Committee.
This committee reviewed data and provided insight to help identify and prioritize community health needs including obesity and chronic disease management and provided partnerships integral to implementing collaborative community health improvement strategies. Union Hospital. Union Hospital engaged their local Community Health Advisory Committee CHAC to solicit input from community partners.
During special CHAC meetings community stakeholders helped identify and rank top health priorities and form goals and strategies for each. To broaden community representation, CHAC invited additional organizations with food system expertise to participate in meetings, including Elkton Community Kitchen; Deep Roots, which operates a food pantry and cafe offering free meals daily; Cecil County Department of Community Services, which provides a home-delivered meal program and nutrition programming; and Meeting Ground, which offers a free lunch program.
Union Hospital also partnered with Winbak Farm to host a focus group that would reach Spanish-speaking, migrant workers with limited access to the internet thus have difficulty completing the online CHNA survey.
Genesys Regional Health System collaborated with the Greater Flint Area Health Coalition GFHC to conduct a collaborative CHNA. Increasing vegetable consumption among students was identified as a community health improvement objective. Community food organizations such as Edible Flint, Flint Farmers Market, Food Bank of Eastern Michigan, and North End Soup Kitchen participated in GFHC committees or as members of the GFHC Community Network, therefore became engaged in the CHNA process.
Healthy food access and food insecurity emerged as factors underlying a number of the top community health needs identified obesity, diabetes, overweight. Implementation strategies include collaborative initiatives focused on improving access to and consumption of healthy foods.
Engaging the community to understand food needs. Including community stakeholders in the community health needs assessment process. Understanding the environments in which community members make food decisions as well as the availability of resources to meet daily food needs is critical to effectively address diet-related health conditions.
Beyond satisfying community benefit requirements, there are a number of benefits to conducting a robust landscape assessment of existing community food resources and engaging community members during the community health needs assessment CHNA and health improvement planning process.
Federal requirements to engage the community in the CHNA process. Adrienne harvesting sage as a part of the Healthy Roots Collaborative programming in rural Vermont.
Northwestern Medical Center. Mapping the community food environment. The following resources discuss methods, tools and example assessments, all of which hospitals can draw on to incorporate community food assessment components into a community health needs assessment CHNA : The Community Food Security Assessment Toolkit , produced by the U.
Department of Agriculture USDA , includes a guide and series of standardized measurement tools for assessing various aspects of community food security, including components of the community food environment, community food resources, and household food security.
Data collection tools include secondary data sources, focus group guides, and a food store survey instrument. Certain components may be useful to draw on as standalone exercises or to incorporate as elements in a CHNA.
A Guide to Community Food Assessment provides context for the emerging field of Community Food Assessments CFA , including an overview of the U.
food system and community food security approach. This resource defines CFAs and benefits, presents brief case studies, outlines basic steps of an assessment, and provides detailed guidance on the CFA process from developing goals and research questions to putting the assessment to work in your community.
Healthier Food Retail: Beginning the Assessment Process in Your State or Community is a report from the Centers for Disease Control CDC that provides a detailed overview of how to conduct an assessment of the food retail environment at the state or local level.
It contains a number of useful resources and data sources, guidance on collaboration and methodology, and information on developing a successful implementation strategy after conducting the assessment. Whole Measures for Community Food Systems Whole Measures CFS is a values-based community-oriented tool for evaluation, planning, and dialogue geared toward organizational and community change.
This Community Food Assessments resource from LiveWell Colorado provides guidance and resources for getting started, navigating data collection, as well as a variety of tools to support CFA activities. Whatever strategy or approach a hospital may take to identify and inventory stakeholder groups, organizations, and existing community food system resources, key questions to consider include: Which organizations are working on food access, healthy eating, and food insecurity issues in your community?
Which organizations are involved with local food promotion or community development through food initiatives? Potential partners for community health needs assessment. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP], Women, Infants, and Children [WIC] Food and Nutrition Service, fruit and vegetable incentive programs, etc.
Food banks and pantries Soup kitchens and congregate meal programs Supplemental meal provision programs e. Meals on Wheels Food system advocacy groups e.
community gardening , urban farming programs, community supported agriculture Food production or value-added processing community development program e. community kitchens, food business incubators, food hubs Farm-to-school networks Colleges, universities, and agriculture extension agencies Government agencies U.
Department of Agriculture [USDA], USDA Food and Nutrition Services [USDA-FNS] City government planners and sustainability managers Local health foundations.
Engaging community-based food organizations and community stakeholders After identifying existing community food system resources as well as key stakeholders, including organizations that work on food-related issues and with low-income and minority communities, key questions include: Who is already at the table for your CHNA process?
What food system stakeholder group or community is not represented? What community food assessments already exist? Who would you like to be at the table to provide insight, expertise and on-the-ground experience? At what point s in the CHNA process would their input and expertise be most valuable?
And how would you ideally like to have them participate? Participate in data collection Participate in community health data review and health needs prioritization Serve on the CHNA steering committee These forms of engagement are not mutually exclusive and it is valuable to incorporate any number of the practices described below.
Data collection Community-based organizations and stakeholders that work on healthy food access, food insecurity, or other food system related initiatives can be a great resource to help develop relevant, appropriate, and effective data collection strategies.
Data review and prioritization Including community stakeholders in the process of identifying and prioritizing health needs can help ensure accurate understanding of needs and priorities for different groups and neighborhoods in the assessment area.
Common opportunities to include food-related community organizations in the data review and prioritization process include: Partner with a community-based food organization to host a community event to engage key stakeholders, organizations and community members in data review, interpretation and needs prioritization.
Work with the organization to identify key stakeholder groups for participation to ensure representation of the entire food system, key actors, and community. Initiate or utilize an existing cross-sector community health coalition, workgroup or committee that includes food system stakeholders to interpret data and identify priority health needs.
Administer a survey to gather community input on needs prioritization. Partner with community food organizations and agencies that work on food issues to disseminate through their networks.
By: Fold Simpson, former Community Optimize Liaison; Jodee Nutritional benefits of superfoods, Community Engagement Claire Enbagement, Research Enggaement Local food community engagement University Ocmmunity Food Mouthguards Engagemen. Download print fodo. In spring Anti-inflammatory cooking recipes, the IU Center Mouthguards Rural Engagement and I U Sustainable Mouthguards Systems Science Engagemebt with Lost River Market vood Deli in Paoli, Indiana to launch a multifaceted community food project, Lost River Local. Each week, Lost River distributes boxes of fresh produce to participants who are either self-referred Community Box or prescribed Nutrition Box healthy local food. In both programs, participants connect with other community members working toward greater food literacy and a healthier lifestyle. They have access to online cooking and nutrition lessons using the Cooking Matters curriculum, and engage in a closed Facebook group where they share what they have learned and cooked each week. This project is a great example of how to bring partners together for community-led food system change.
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