Political Action Plan

Food Deserts

              It is common knowledge that America’s obesity rate is climbing and there are still areas in America where healthy food is not available or affordable. Our group believes that this is a very important issue and this bill comes at a great time; America is moving towards a healthy change. This bill calls for making healthy food available and affordable in “Food Deserts,” which are defined as areas where there is limited access to healthy food. The bill, however, does not state any specifics on how they plan to do this. The initial cost is going to be significant and this could be difficult on an already stretched budget, but we believe the benefits of this bill greatly outweigh the initial costs.

Political action plan: 

1. Government Agency designated for implementing strategies to increase the availability of healthy foods.

• There should be one committee that is in charge of implementing this project. 
• Supportive research shows that by combining behavioral change and environmental strategies to increase the availability of healthy food choices in local shops and consumption of nutritional foods. The media and free giveaways, including water bottles, were used to encourage to participation. Modifying outdoor food advertising is an example of advertising the opportunity to increase healthy food promotion and decrease unhealthy food promotion.  
• The government can implement small steps like these to promote participation.

 2. Communities where this is to be implemented should undergo a general health survey one year before, and one year after, healthy foods are made available.

• Each year a survey, involving health and eating habits, should be performed to chart the improvement of the community’s health to see if it’s worth the cost that it takes to implement.

        3. Encourage people to buy from local farmers and encourage the institution of Farmer’s Markets to make access to healthy food easier.  The government should offer big corporations, such as Wal-Mart, incentives to encourage them to purchase from local farmers. This would decrease the transportation costs and support the local American economy. 

   

• Governmental incentives to these corporations could potentially involve tax refunds for supporting the local economy and benefiting the community through providing healthy foods. Research shows that protecting and supporting urban agriculture and horticulture increases access to healthy foods within the community.

       4. These interventions should be done on a small scale first, choosing a few small communities in Food Deserts, so we can determine the impact. If the impact is significant, then we can move to a larger scale in Virginia, and eventually across the US.  

Stakeholders:

Delores McQuinn, Mamye BaCote, Betsy Carr, and Roslyn Tyler.

Scholarly Research:

Evans, A., Wilson, D., Buck, J., Torbett, H., & Williams, J. (2006). Outcome expectations, barriers, and strategies for healthful eating: a perspective from adolescents from low-income families. Family & Community Health, 29(1), 17-27.

Good, E., Hammond, M., Martin, C., Burns, C., & Groos, A. (2010). An audit of local government planning tools for their potential use in addressing community food and nutrition issues. Health Promotion Journal Of Australia, 21(1), 5-11.

Sharma, S., Gittelsohn, J., Rosol, R., & Beck, L. (2010). Addressing the public health burden caused by the nutrition transition through the Healthy Foods North nutrition and lifestyle intervention programme. Journal Of Human Nutrition & Dietetics, 23120-127. doi:10.1111/j.1365-277X.2010.01107.x