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Publications
Publications (35)
Food-related programs and policies are present across municipal government departments and agencies, but many local government officials do not recognize food systems as a public good. Food policy councils (FPCs) are stepping in to work collaboratively with multi-sector stakeholders, including community members and governments in municipalities acr...
Food policy councils (FPCs) are one form of community coalition that aims to address challenges to local food systems and enhance availability, accessibility, and affordability of healthy foods for local residents. We used data from the 2014 National Survey of Community-Based Policy and Environmental Supports for Healthy Eating and Active Living, a...
This report—an updated version of the first annotated bibliography released in 2017—aims to highlight the existing and emerging research on food policy groups in industrialized countries.
Food policy councils (FPCs) are an embodiment of food democracy, providing a space for community members, professionals, and government to learn together, deliberate, and collectively devise place-based strategies to address complex food systems issues. These collaborative governance networks can be considered a transitional stage in the democratic...
Due to correlations between purchasing patterns and diet disparities, differences in food shopping patterns and strategies across income levels and other socio-economic characteristics is a widely-studied research area. Most extant literature uses either primary or secondary data, which are often characterized by, respectively, limited geographical...
This study examined the association of household food security and school participation in the community eligibility provision (CEP). Surveys were collected from 427 households within 5 schools participating in CEP, and therefore providing access to universal free school meals, and three matched comparison district schools, which were CEP-eligible...
The objective of this study was to measure the reliability of an index to assess healthy food in food stores. Food stores across Baltimore City were assessed using the Healthy Food Availability Index-Brief (HFAI-B) tool and resulting HFAI-B score. Reliability was measured using the Pearson correlation for the HFAI-B score, and Cohen’s Kappa for oth...
According to findings from an annual survey of food policy councils (FPCs) by the Food Policy Networks project (FPN), the number of FPCs continues to grow in the United States and Canada. The FPN project is a project of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF), based at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Through FPN, CLF works to bui...
To examine how barriers to healthy food access and household income are associated with cooking and eating behaviors we fielded a nationally representative survey among 1112 adults in the United States in 2015. The survey included measures of barriers to accessing healthy food, household income, and frequency of cooking and eating meals, cooking pr...
Despite 2 decades of effort by the public health community to combat obesity, obesity rates in the United States continue to rise. This lack of progress raises fundamental questions about the adequacy of our current approaches. Although the causes of population-wide obesity are multifactorial, attention to food systems as potential drivers of obesi...
Food policy councils (FPCs) are collaboratives that work to strengthen food systems. Over 300 FPCs exist in the United States, Canada, and Tribal Nations. In 2015, we surveyed the types of initiatives FPCs undertook and identified food sector targets and domains of potential impact in an effort to inform comprehensive FPC impact assessments. FPCs...
Objective
Excess meat consumption, particularly of red and processed meats, is associated with nutritional and environmental health harms. While only a small portion of the population is vegetarian, surveys suggest many Americans may be reducing their meat consumption. To inform education campaigns, more information is needed about attitudes, perce...
The market basket chosen for the Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast (EFSNE) project was one of its major tools, as its contents served as the subject of a variety of analyses across the research teams. The interdisciplinary systems project studied multiple components of food systems in the Northeast region. One of the team members’ first coll...
Emphasis on local foods and local food systems has often meant that the importance of other scales goes unrecognized or underappreciated. While each scale has limitations, some food system experts now assert the benefits of the regional scale for its ability to foster a more sufficient, diverse, affordable, and resilient food system. This paper con...
Note: This is a JAFSCD commentary; it was not peer-reviewed.
Complex projects must manage many challenges, including how to communicate about them. In this commentary, we present and assess the extension and outreach objectives, activities, challenges and outcomes of a complex, inter-disciplinary food systems research project called Enhancing Food...
This annotated bibliography highlights the existing and emerging research on food policy groups in industrialized countries.
Urban food systems have changed considerably over the past half century. Older adults' descriptions of place-based, personal food system history can help inform student learning and may contribute to expert understanding of food system change. Structural and social shifts in food purchasing and consumption contribute to diet-related disease and los...
Urban agriculture has become a popular topic for metropolitan areas to engage in on a program and policy level. It is touted as a means of promoting public health and economic development, building social capital, and repurposing unused land. Food policy councils and other groups that seek to position urban agriculture to policy makers often strugg...
Supermarket-based interventions are one approach to improving the local food environment and reducing obesity and chronic disease in low-income populations. We implemented a multicomponent intervention that aimed to reduce environmental barriers to healthy food purchasing in a supermarket in Southwest Baltimore. The intervention, Eat Right-Live Wel...
Objective:
To evaluate a multifaceted supermarket intervention promoting healthier alternatives to commonly purchased foods.
Design:
Sales of 385 foods promoted between July and October, 2012 in the Eat Right-Live Well! intervention supermarket were compared with sales in a control supermarket.
Setting:
Two supermarkets in geographically separ...
Food Policy Councils (FPC) help to identify and address the priorities of local, state, and regional food systems with the goal of improving food systems through policy. There is limited research describing FPCs' strategies for accomplishing this goal. As part of a larger study examining FPC policy efforts, this paper investigates the role of partn...
To discover how organic food factors into low-income consumers’ overall understanding of healthy eating, we analyzed 36 in-depth interviews with adults in Baltimore, Maryland. We asked participants to discuss their understanding of healthy eating. Unprompted, many participants discussed organic food or attributes commonly understood to define organ...
Supermarket-based interventions are one approach to improving the local food environment and reducing obesity and chronic disease in low-income populations. We implemented a multicomponent intervention that aimed to reduce environmental barriers to healthy food purchasing in a supermarket in Southwest Baltimore. The intervention, Eat Right-Live Wel...
As cities across the nation seek to improve healthy food access, this participant observer case study highlights how one midsized city successfully developed a collaborative infrastructure to understand and address inequity in healthy food access. We trace the genesis and evolution of Baltimore's Food Policy Task Force, the hiring of a food policy...
Although urban community gardening can offer health, social, environmental, and economic benefits, these benefits must be weighed against the potential health risks stemming from exposure to contaminants such as heavy metals and organic chemicals that may be present in urban soils. Individuals who garden at or eat food grown in contaminated urban g...
Research demonstrates that food desert environments limit low-income shoppers’ ability to purchase healthy foods, thereby increasing their likelihood of diet-related illnesses. We sought to understand how individuals in an urban American food desert make grocery-purchasing decisions, and specifically why unhealthy purchases arise. Analysis is based...
Urban community gardens have received wide support for their health, environmental, and social benefits. Risks resulting from residual soil contamination may be faced by those who work in and consume produce from these gardens. This study characterizes perceptions of risk posed by garden soil-based contaminants among urban community gardeners in Ba...
Food policy councils (FPCs) have become a popular way to organize various food system stakeholders at the local, municipal, and state levels. FPCs typically build partnerships with stakeholders; examine current policies, regulations, and ordinances related to food; and support or create programs that address food system issues. While FPCs have the...
Data show that the food desert environment is correlated with high risk of diet-related illness in low-income urban communities. Using an empirical model of grocery purchasing decision processes, we explained how specific components of the economic and structural environment influenced purchasing decisions that conflicted with shoppers understandin...
The United States has set a national goal to eliminate health disparities. This article emphasizes the importance of food systems in generating and exacerbating health disparities in the United States and suggests avenues for reducing them. It presents a conceptual model showing how broad food system conditions interplay with community food environ...
To address childhood obesity, interventions need to be developed that improve adolescents' food choices. While challenging, it is vital to work with middle school students as they are becoming more autonomous in their food choices. Emerging concerns about appearance are not reflected in young adolescents' food choices and these poor choices can hav...
The right to adequate food is a core human right established in many international declarations and covenants. United Nations General Comment 12 elaborates details of the right, stating that it implies both The availability of food in a quantity and quality sufficient to satisfy the dietary needs of individuals, free from adverse substances, and ac...