Strengthening Families: Building Nutrition Stable Communities

[Music] hello everybody we are so excited to be here my name is Renee Watkins Chambers I am the president and CEO of Crossroads Community Services out of Dallas Texas where we are strengthening families to build nutrition stable communities which is what we&#39;re going to talk about today and I&#39;m glad to be here with my friends and partner in this work Whitney Strauss tell us about yourself so I am representing the AdvoCare Foundation I&#39;m the executive director I have been with the foundation since 2015 and our focus is on eradicating childhood obesity including helping communities have healthy eating habits which is why I am here today to talk about that absolutely well you know what&#39;s interesting about Whitney is she is soon to add a few letters to the end of her name to get your doctorate and your dissertation is on something that I think is very interesting food sovereignty we&#39;re hearing a lot of new terms around the issue of food insecurity a lot of new narratives talk to me a little bit about why those narratives are important and the impact that they&#39;re going to make in addressing this issue of food insecurity in our communities sure um for those of you all that may not know food sovereignty is solution based so it&#39;s looking at what communities are doing to own their entire food system so it is fairly new in the food landscape at least the last 20 or so years and for me the importance of the narrative is twofold one it is talking about Community solutions to with the issue of food insecurity in the communities that are impacted the most but in addition it&#39;s changing the narrative to talk about food as a human right which is fairly new so no longer a social service or talking about it as a certain Condition it&#39;s talking about it as each of us as humans it is our human right to have access to healthy food so that really empowers us as a community to look at those solutions to resolve that absolutely and I think as you&#39;re doing that you&#39;ve had some interesting interactions on some Urban Farms tell us a little bit about that uh so that&#39;s actually the focus of my dissertation is urban agriculture so uh purposely looking at the urban Farms that are owned by the communities that they are based in which is a little challenging to find to be honest because 95 of farms are run by white men which all due respect but looking at community-led Solutions I want to define the Farms that are actually based in the communities that they&#39;re served and run by people in that community so um yeah it has been interesting so far I&#39;m right in the middle of my research and looking at Tucson La Detroit and Atlanta as the as my models for what I want to base my case studies on and really the entire system that they have built to support really eradicating food inequity in their communities so it&#39;s exciting more to come and so I know one of the things we wanted to talk about today too is really as we&#39;re entering into some of the health studies around 2030 and the social determinants of Health you know what is happening in the space of community organization so Community organizations like Crossroads who are really as you said creating that space of human right of the dignified experience of not just being given a box of food but really getting the opportunity to shop for themselves produce healthy proteins plant-based foods that we are able to provide to the people the people that we serve in the communities but let&#39;s talk a little bit about the access to that so one of the challenges in accessing those types of what once was maybe pantries but now maybe considering Community Markets is the fact that they are not always in the location where the people who need them the most are so when you&#39;re looking at this and you&#39;ve been a part of Crossroads and knowing how we do this work what are you finding is that part of what we want to do revolutionizing that distribution of food directly to community members that is making a difference I think it is that market base that you&#39;re talking about Benet um it is being intentional about looking at Food mapping and the distribution so looking at how healthy produce and that the food that&#39;s given to you by the by the North Texas Food Bank how that is coming to the communities that need it the most so it&#39;s being really intentional about that um and involving the community in that solution as well and when you talk about the social determinants of Health it&#39;s also making sure that there&#39;s a model which I know that you&#39;re working on that right now at Redbird that is looking at if someone is coming to a clinic that there is also the access to food because one of the uh with social determinants of Health it&#39;s looking at that Upstream of healthy food is a a contributor to social internments of Health in addition to the environment that you live exactly yes and so when we talk about what that model looks like some of you may have heard about food RX programs Medicaid and Medicare is now actually reimbursing for referrals and prescriptions for produce and food and so Crossroads is looking to launch into that work by creating a nutrition Pharmacy a place where equally people will go to get their medications well we know food is medicine this is a new term but the reality is food has always been medicine and so now it&#39;s those Health communities actually understanding that that social determinant is about access and so putting those nutrition firms these right in the same space where those folks are going to the doctor it&#39;s similarly to our pharmacies for medic medication so really how do we create the access it&#39;s really about proximity right because proximity if I have to go too far I&#39;m probably not going to go yeah correct yeah it&#39;s it&#39;s that&#39;s been research-based that&#39;s something that I&#39;ve found in my research is yeah if you&#39;re if you&#39;re creating more barriers yeah then they&#39;re you&#39;re not going to be able to have that access so part of the community getting involved in that is to make sure that you are basing those Solutions where people need it the most and not creating additional barriers that they are already experiencing so that&#39;s why I love what crossroads is doing because y&#39;all are definitely the thought leaders in making sure that that&#39;s happening absolutely so one of the main barriers when I&#39;m often asked about get people accessing food that need it is transportation so when you create another barrier that now I&#39;ve gotten my transportation to the doctor I now have another barrier to go and get the food and then when I need to go back to the doctor I&#39;m not having that consistency of accessing the food when I&#39;m in the place where it&#39;s being determined that I need it but you had an interesting experience in the last few months I was very jealous by the way you got to go to Tanzania and really experience there what you felt like was solution you came back and said they figured it out there so what did they figure out which I know people are going really um because you know in the in the scale there&#39;s still considerable amount of famine going on in Africa but particularly in East Africa where I was but I was able to have a very just a complete experience spending time with people in Tanzania people ask me about the animals so I I spent half a day looking at animals it was having this really profound experience with people there and I was able to see their food systems and what they&#39;ve built and I&#39;ve since read more about it is food food resilience so knowing that we are dealing with climate change knowing that they&#39;re going to be dealing with famine knowing that there&#39;s politics economic circumstances with this it is how are each family making sure that they are food resilient so everywhere you go from villages to in the city and I was in Arusha for part of the time too uh you were seeing that each family has built a whole system with their agriculture in their yard but then they&#39;ve also looked at alternatives to you know market-based Solutions so there&#39;s bartering again or this side of the neighborhood is growing one thing and this side of the neighborhood is growing another thing and they&#39;re trading and bartering and when I was asking about food in Tanzania are the one of the leaders that we were with just gave me a strange look and he said we take care of each other here that&#39;s which I think we all can learn from that they said there&#39;s plenty to go around we take care of each other here and from that that really changed was part of changing my perspective on bringing that experience back to our work here in the states and looking at those again community-led Solutions with Urban Agriculture and the distribution and everything else and what could we be doing differently or at least have a different perspective about it well then when we think about community-led Solutions we also think about the fact that that means the community has to be involved and the solution has to be consistently involving them and so one of the things that we do at Crossroads is really work with our partner organizations we really listen to the folks who are coming in to receive food from us what are they like what are they not like I think we also have to understand that just because someone is lower income doesn&#39;t mean they don&#39;t have or want choices choice in my food is a human right as well as is the ability to have a culturally relevant food so a lot of people will look at a community organization like a Crossroads or any of the others that you&#39;ve seen today and say well why aren&#39;t you just focusing on this one thing because it&#39;s what that Community needs and let me tell you I hear that frequently and I say really so should I come and tell you what you need and is that all you&#39;re going to want to eat and so I think as we&#39;re thinking about what are the solutions it&#39;s how are you bringing those community members in to the space how are you asking them innovatively how they would solve the problem um so on that note I have a question for you so you all probably hopefully have read that the SNAP benefits have gone away so in addition to Rising food costs um I have been reading more about this is considered a hunger Cliff so we not only have those that have chronic chronically experienced food insecurity but now you have what I what I am calling the food vulnerable so it&#39;s this whole other population of people that at any given time any change in their situation from inflation to Rising food costs to their car breaks down or whatever we&#39;ll put them in a place where they will need support for finding healthy food so I&#39;m curious how Crossroads is looking at that and finding those Solutions so we really are focusing on building that nutrition stable community so it is inclusive of multiple aspects first and foremost the community market that&#39;s where we&#39;re giving that dignified experience to our community members who can&#39;t afford the grocery store the opportunity to shop in a grocery store type experience the second is school markets um you know a chef said it best if the children aren&#39;t eating they aren&#39;t learning but one of the challenges is what they can eat at school but when they go home they&#39;re missing the next meals until they get back so can we get those markets in our schools where those children are able to shop for their families even or with their families in a place again proximity that is proximal to where they are then we&#39;re looking at mobile markets you have a lot of rural areas where you don&#39;t have access where there&#39;s still a lot of stigma around the issue of accessing food at no cost to the family so let&#39;s take it to them and then it&#39;s the nutrition Pharmacy so we know that so much of our health outcomes are based on the food that we are eating again proximal to where they&#39;re going to the doctor so it&#39;s not just one thing it really has to be a full circle of access to food in all the places that I&#39;m already in and the ones that I can&#39;t get to for whatever that reason is you&#39;re going to actually bring it into my community so that&#39;s the type of work that we&#39;re looking at and that&#39;s the type of work that I think is really going to make the difference moving forward but I want to go back to something that you talked about in the urban Farms one of the things you found in the urban Farms as well was how that Community was not just creating the food through the farming but how they were creating work and how that ultimately also leads into access to food sure so I found there are really two distinct well types of models for urban Farms it ours it is the model of wanting to provide food access for uh in with the goal of addressing food insecurity um the other model is more of an economic empowerment so it create they create jobs they create Pathways for those that have those that are formally incarcerated so I have seen that as an economic model as well that has lifted up that Community I think when we&#39;re looking at Urban agriculture it&#39;s important to understand that there are lots of subjective benefits to them and that&#39;s a huge part of my research is looking at who is benefiting from Urban farms and how and then how are they a part of that into that whole system Within These communities of providing healthy food access and you you are in research and Crossroads does a lot of research but talk about why the research partnered with the community organization is changing the narrative both but also the data there&#39;s so much data but what are we doing with the data that&#39;s coming out of the research and why is it important to be partnered with these Community organizations and doing that I think that&#39;s a great question um it is for my my chair of my dissertation committee asked me he said you know how are you proving your impact are you sure that you&#39;re really providing the access to food and the are you really kind of proving it so I think that&#39;s where data really helps is because it&#39;s it&#39;s not only making your case in the community or to funders or whatever but it&#39;s actually kind of continuing to question are we really helping those that need our help are we really fulfilling our mission so that&#39;s where I think that the data driven Solutions are so critical that we can continue to to question that and to really work towards making sure that that these efforts are really helping those that need it the most so I you know one other question that we hadn&#39;t previously talked about but I&#39;m going to ask anyway is really you know Whitney you&#39;re coming at this as a woman I&#39;m a woman as well but when we&#39;re looking at this and we&#39;ve heard a lot about the importance of women in this work today what does the future look like on the research side for women to really be digging in to the research to be controlling and not controlling we don&#39;t want to control the research or the data but really be in the space of leadership is what I would say in the research that is fueling the information for the decisions that are being made for whether it&#39;s venture capitalist whether it&#39;s Community organizations where do you see that I mean with women&#39;s month so let&#39;s talk about that for a second I think we&#39;ve we&#39;ve heard a lot of great things so far today about the women and food and the importance of of women continuing to lead in this space um for me a the the largest percentage of households that are impacted by food insecurity are women they&#39;re single moms so for for me it it makes it personal um that I as a mom want to seek the solution for other women that are facing this Challenge and to lift them up but I&#39;m also finding in communities that the solutions that are coming up in urban agriculture others are women LED so with that lens it&#39;s just one more piece of empowering women to be a part of this bigger solution and get into the research and get into the data to show that and then share it amongst communities too all right thank you for that so as we head to our wrap up and we think about the future of food what for you do you see is the future of food in the space of access particularly Community Access for those who need it the most I think we we really need to look at all community-led solutions but also be really open-minded to different solutions so I know you&#39;ve heard this a lot if we had a dollar for every time we&#39;ve heard it we&#39;d be we&#39;d be well off but it&#39;s then why don&#39;t they just put a grocery store in that neighborhood that&#39;s yeah but I think those Market those market-based Solutions that&#39;s not that&#39;s not really going to be enough that we need to look at alternatives to that when it tiered grocery stores where you can either go shop for free or you shop based on your income or and how retail is involved in redistributing that produce I know that&#39;s a big that&#39;s a big Focus for Kroger which I&#39;m excited to hear from them today um I think you need to involve and I&#39;ve seen this involving the community and talking about what do they need what do they want and looking at that resource mapping of what&#39;s already existing there and then investing in those Solutions absolutely I love that tiered approach because really when we think about it Crossroads does huge partnership with one of our local institutions UT Southwestern and people are always saying how do the two of you a community organization and a major institution of learning do all of this amazing research that is literally revolutionizing the way pantries and Community Markets are Distributing food and I say because we choose to we choose to so one of the things that people are always saying to me as well about the grocery store I&#39;m like that&#39;s great let&#39;s bring a grocery store let&#39;s also bring a grocery store that has a community market attached to it so that we can meet the needs of the low-income families that can&#39;t afford the grocery store they can use their SNAP benefits in the grocery store but we&#39;re forgetting that there&#39;s a middle group there&#39;s a middle group that they can afford some things in the grocery store but not everything and so how can retailers and Community organizations partner in the exact same space again proximity and allow that whole Continuum of community members access to the food that they need and the right that they have to have food if we can do it as a small non-profit organization in a very large institution it can be done and when I think about the future of food that&#39;s what it is it is the decision for big organizations small organizations community-led efforts and large Retail Partners to choose that it&#39;s not always easy and there are challenges but that we are going to create a solution for this that is about access for everyone to have the right to food I think that&#39;s important note to end on too because we are already have the tools to solve this problem we have more than enough food in the United States to feed everyone plus some and I know climate change has been talked about and absolutely this is a huge part of it is how it&#39;s being produced how it&#39;s being distributed and then the amount of waste so if we have the tools already it is go to me going to that in the community talking even by neighborhood about what would work the best here and making it culturally relevant to that Community looking at their distribution models looking at those locally LED Solutions but we have the tools already so I think for the future of food it is that accessibility that proximity but also us connecting and talking to each other which is a huge part of what we&#39;re doing today to look at connecting the dots and what would work and thinking outside the box on different kinds of markets different kinds of distribution what&#39;s already in that community that we can provide healthy access to food because we have it we have all the tools I was recently at an event where the speaker said that we could fill and if you&#39;ve ever that we know people are listening and are here from all over the world but Texas stadium everybody knows the Dallas Cowboys the ATT Stadium out there they can fill it eight times eight times with the amount of food that we waste with the amount of food that we waste and that&#39;s massive amount of food that is just thrown away every day and so when we think about how again we partner together to meet in the middle Kroger is one of our great Partners we actually receive reclamated food from them that we&#39;re able to redistribute back out in the community it&#39;s all shelf stable but there&#39;s an opportunity for that to be produce as well so again we know those large institutions and Community organizations can work together so I want to leave you and I&#39;ll ask Wendy to do the same in our last minute with what you can do there are three things who is your local organization that you need to be spending some time with and trying to understand how they are using community-led Solutions and how you can partner with them and then who are our business owners investors who can invest in those Partnerships because it&#39;s important we can&#39;t assume that the non-profit can do it because they don&#39;t have the money I promise we don&#39;t um and we shouldn&#39;t assume that it&#39;s all the responsibility of the retailers either but it&#39;s a collective effort and a collaborative effort to come together and find the solution at the table with all of us and particularly because we&#39;ve decided that food is a human right winning I think I would have you all do a call to action to ask this question in your own communities I know Austin has a great Coalition already that is looking at their food system that I&#39;m excited to hear from today so shout out to Austin for being a part of the solution but ask in your own cities is there a coalition is there a group that is made up of all of the entities that are involved in addressing food inequity from Hospital Systems to education it&#39;s they&#39;re all that they should all be at the table and in addition to Food Service organizations in addition to retailers so go back to your communities and ask that question is does that exist because if it does that means that they&#39;ve started the conversation which is important to connect the dots to really resolve this issue and if it doesn&#39;t advocate for that in your own Community because if they&#39;re not talking to each other then that&#39;s that solution they may be missing so really talk to your elected officials talk to your community leaders does that exist in your community if it doesn&#39;t all right well thank you all very much for your time today [Music] thank you [Music]

[Music] hello everybody we are so excited to be here my name is Renee Watkins Chambers I am the president and CEO of Crossroads Community Services out of Dallas Texas where we are strengthening families to build nutrition stable communities which is what we&amp;#39;re going to talk about today and I&amp;#39;m glad to be here with my friends and partner in this work Whitney Strauss tell us about yourself so I am representing the AdvoCare Foundation I&amp;#39;m the executive director I have been with the foundation since 2015 and our focus is on eradicating childhood obesity including helping communities have healthy eating habits which is why I am here today to talk about that absolutely well you know what&amp;#39;s interesting about Whitney is she is soon to add a few letters to the end of her name to get your doctorate and your dissertation is on something that I think is very interesting food sovereignty we&amp;#39;re hearing a lot of new terms around the issue of food insecurity a lot of new narratives talk to me a little bit about why those narratives are important and the impact that they&amp;#39;re going to make in addressing this issue of food insecurity in our communities sure um for those of you all that may not know food sovereignty is solution based so it&amp;#39;s looking at what communities are doing to own their entire food system so it is fairly new in the food landscape at least the last 20 or so years and for me the importance of the narrative is twofold one it is talking about Community solutions to with the issue of food insecurity in the communities that are impacted the most but in addition it&amp;#39;s changing the narrative to talk about food as a human right which is fairly new so no longer a social service or talking about it as a certain Condition it&amp;#39;s talking about it as each of us as humans it is our human right to have access to healthy food so that really empowers us as a community to look at those solutions to resolve that absolutely and I think as you&amp;#39;re doing that you&amp;#39;ve had some interesting interactions on some Urban Farms tell us a little bit about that uh so that&amp;#39;s actually the focus of my dissertation is urban agriculture so uh purposely looking at the urban Farms that are owned by the communities that they are based in which is a little challenging to find to be honest because 95 of farms are run by white men which all due respect but looking at community-led Solutions I want to define the Farms that are actually based in the communities that they&amp;#39;re served and run by people in that community so um yeah it has been interesting so far I&amp;#39;m right in the middle of my research and looking at Tucson La Detroit and Atlanta as the as my models for what I want to base my case studies on and really the entire system that they have built to support really eradicating food inequity in their communities so it&amp;#39;s exciting more to come and so I know one of the things we wanted to talk about today too is really as we&amp;#39;re entering into some of the health studies around 2030 and the social determinants of Health you know what is happening in the space of community organization so Community organizations like Crossroads who are really as you said creating that space of human right of the dignified experience of not just being given a box of food but really getting the opportunity to shop for themselves produce healthy proteins plant-based foods that we are able to provide to the people the people that we serve in the communities but let&amp;#39;s talk a little bit about the access to that so one of the challenges in accessing those types of what once was maybe pantries but now maybe considering Community Markets is the fact that they are not always in the location where the people who need them the most are so when you&amp;#39;re looking at this and you&amp;#39;ve been a part of Crossroads and knowing how we do this work what are you finding is that part of what we want to do revolutionizing that distribution of food directly to community members that is making a difference I think it is that market base that you&amp;#39;re talking about Benet um it is being intentional about looking at Food mapping and the distribution so looking at how healthy produce and that the food that&amp;#39;s given to you by the by the North Texas Food Bank how that is coming to the communities that need it the most so it&amp;#39;s being really intentional about that um and involving the community in that solution as well and when you talk about the social determinants of Health it&amp;#39;s also making sure that there&amp;#39;s a model which I know that you&amp;#39;re working on that right now at Redbird that is looking at if someone is coming to a clinic that there is also the access to food because one of the uh with social determinants of Health it&amp;#39;s looking at that Upstream of healthy food is a a contributor to social internments of Health in addition to the environment that you live exactly yes and so when we talk about what that model looks like some of you may have heard about food RX programs Medicaid and Medicare is now actually reimbursing for referrals and prescriptions for produce and food and so Crossroads is looking to launch into that work by creating a nutrition Pharmacy a place where equally people will go to get their medications well we know food is medicine this is a new term but the reality is food has always been medicine and so now it&amp;#39;s those Health communities actually understanding that that social determinant is about access and so putting those nutrition firms these right in the same space where those folks are going to the doctor it&amp;#39;s similarly to our pharmacies for medic medication so really how do we create the access it&amp;#39;s really about proximity right because proximity if I have to go too far I&amp;#39;m probably not going to go yeah correct yeah it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s been research-based that&amp;#39;s something that I&amp;#39;ve found in my research is yeah if you&amp;#39;re if you&amp;#39;re creating more barriers yeah then they&amp;#39;re you&amp;#39;re not going to be able to have that access so part of the community getting involved in that is to make sure that you are basing those Solutions where people need it the most and not creating additional barriers that they are already experiencing so that&amp;#39;s why I love what crossroads is doing because y&amp;#39;all are definitely the thought leaders in making sure that that&amp;#39;s happening absolutely so one of the main barriers when I&amp;#39;m often asked about get people accessing food that need it is transportation so when you create another barrier that now I&amp;#39;ve gotten my transportation to the doctor I now have another barrier to go and get the food and then when I need to go back to the doctor I&amp;#39;m not having that consistency of accessing the food when I&amp;#39;m in the place where it&amp;#39;s being determined that I need it but you had an interesting experience in the last few months I was very jealous by the way you got to go to Tanzania and really experience there what you felt like was solution you came back and said they figured it out there so what did they figure out which I know people are going really um because you know in the in the scale there&amp;#39;s still considerable amount of famine going on in Africa but particularly in East Africa where I was but I was able to have a very just a complete experience spending time with people in Tanzania people ask me about the animals so I I spent half a day looking at animals it was having this really profound experience with people there and I was able to see their food systems and what they&amp;#39;ve built and I&amp;#39;ve since read more about it is food food resilience so knowing that we are dealing with climate change knowing that they&amp;#39;re going to be dealing with famine knowing that there&amp;#39;s politics economic circumstances with this it is how are each family making sure that they are food resilient so everywhere you go from villages to in the city and I was in Arusha for part of the time too uh you were seeing that each family has built a whole system with their agriculture in their yard but then they&amp;#39;ve also looked at alternatives to you know market-based Solutions so there&amp;#39;s bartering again or this side of the neighborhood is growing one thing and this side of the neighborhood is growing another thing and they&amp;#39;re trading and bartering and when I was asking about food in Tanzania are the one of the leaders that we were with just gave me a strange look and he said we take care of each other here that&amp;#39;s which I think we all can learn from that they said there&amp;#39;s plenty to go around we take care of each other here and from that that really changed was part of changing my perspective on bringing that experience back to our work here in the states and looking at those again community-led Solutions with Urban Agriculture and the distribution and everything else and what could we be doing differently or at least have a different perspective about it well then when we think about community-led Solutions we also think about the fact that that means the community has to be involved and the solution has to be consistently involving them and so one of the things that we do at Crossroads is really work with our partner organizations we really listen to the folks who are coming in to receive food from us what are they like what are they not like I think we also have to understand that just because someone is lower income doesn&amp;#39;t mean they don&amp;#39;t have or want choices choice in my food is a human right as well as is the ability to have a culturally relevant food so a lot of people will look at a community organization like a Crossroads or any of the others that you&amp;#39;ve seen today and say well why aren&amp;#39;t you just focusing on this one thing because it&amp;#39;s what that Community needs and let me tell you I hear that frequently and I say really so should I come and tell you what you need and is that all you&amp;#39;re going to want to eat and so I think as we&amp;#39;re thinking about what are the solutions it&amp;#39;s how are you bringing those community members in to the space how are you asking them innovatively how they would solve the problem um so on that note I have a question for you so you all probably hopefully have read that the SNAP benefits have gone away so in addition to Rising food costs um I have been reading more about this is considered a hunger Cliff so we not only have those that have chronic chronically experienced food insecurity but now you have what I what I am calling the food vulnerable so it&amp;#39;s this whole other population of people that at any given time any change in their situation from inflation to Rising food costs to their car breaks down or whatever we&amp;#39;ll put them in a place where they will need support for finding healthy food so I&amp;#39;m curious how Crossroads is looking at that and finding those Solutions so we really are focusing on building that nutrition stable community so it is inclusive of multiple aspects first and foremost the community market that&amp;#39;s where we&amp;#39;re giving that dignified experience to our community members who can&amp;#39;t afford the grocery store the opportunity to shop in a grocery store type experience the second is school markets um you know a chef said it best if the children aren&amp;#39;t eating they aren&amp;#39;t learning but one of the challenges is what they can eat at school but when they go home they&amp;#39;re missing the next meals until they get back so can we get those markets in our schools where those children are able to shop for their families even or with their families in a place again proximity that is proximal to where they are then we&amp;#39;re looking at mobile markets you have a lot of rural areas where you don&amp;#39;t have access where there&amp;#39;s still a lot of stigma around the issue of accessing food at no cost to the family so let&amp;#39;s take it to them and then it&amp;#39;s the nutrition Pharmacy so we know that so much of our health outcomes are based on the food that we are eating again proximal to where they&amp;#39;re going to the doctor so it&amp;#39;s not just one thing it really has to be a full circle of access to food in all the places that I&amp;#39;m already in and the ones that I can&amp;#39;t get to for whatever that reason is you&amp;#39;re going to actually bring it into my community so that&amp;#39;s the type of work that we&amp;#39;re looking at and that&amp;#39;s the type of work that I think is really going to make the difference moving forward but I want to go back to something that you talked about in the urban Farms one of the things you found in the urban Farms as well was how that Community was not just creating the food through the farming but how they were creating work and how that ultimately also leads into access to food sure so I found there are really two distinct well types of models for urban Farms it ours it is the model of wanting to provide food access for uh in with the goal of addressing food insecurity um the other model is more of an economic empowerment so it create they create jobs they create Pathways for those that have those that are formally incarcerated so I have seen that as an economic model as well that has lifted up that Community I think when we&amp;#39;re looking at Urban agriculture it&amp;#39;s important to understand that there are lots of subjective benefits to them and that&amp;#39;s a huge part of my research is looking at who is benefiting from Urban farms and how and then how are they a part of that into that whole system Within These communities of providing healthy food access and you you are in research and Crossroads does a lot of research but talk about why the research partnered with the community organization is changing the narrative both but also the data there&amp;#39;s so much data but what are we doing with the data that&amp;#39;s coming out of the research and why is it important to be partnered with these Community organizations and doing that I think that&amp;#39;s a great question um it is for my my chair of my dissertation committee asked me he said you know how are you proving your impact are you sure that you&amp;#39;re really providing the access to food and the are you really kind of proving it so I think that&amp;#39;s where data really helps is because it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s not only making your case in the community or to funders or whatever but it&amp;#39;s actually kind of continuing to question are we really helping those that need our help are we really fulfilling our mission so that&amp;#39;s where I think that the data driven Solutions are so critical that we can continue to to question that and to really work towards making sure that that these efforts are really helping those that need it the most so I you know one other question that we hadn&amp;#39;t previously talked about but I&amp;#39;m going to ask anyway is really you know Whitney you&amp;#39;re coming at this as a woman I&amp;#39;m a woman as well but when we&amp;#39;re looking at this and we&amp;#39;ve heard a lot about the importance of women in this work today what does the future look like on the research side for women to really be digging in to the research to be controlling and not controlling we don&amp;#39;t want to control the research or the data but really be in the space of leadership is what I would say in the research that is fueling the information for the decisions that are being made for whether it&amp;#39;s venture capitalist whether it&amp;#39;s Community organizations where do you see that I mean with women&amp;#39;s month so let&amp;#39;s talk about that for a second I think we&amp;#39;ve we&amp;#39;ve heard a lot of great things so far today about the women and food and the importance of of women continuing to lead in this space um for me a the the largest percentage of households that are impacted by food insecurity are women they&amp;#39;re single moms so for for me it it makes it personal um that I as a mom want to seek the solution for other women that are facing this Challenge and to lift them up but I&amp;#39;m also finding in communities that the solutions that are coming up in urban agriculture others are women LED so with that lens it&amp;#39;s just one more piece of empowering women to be a part of this bigger solution and get into the research and get into the data to show that and then share it amongst communities too all right thank you for that so as we head to our wrap up and we think about the future of food what for you do you see is the future of food in the space of access particularly Community Access for those who need it the most I think we we really need to look at all community-led solutions but also be really open-minded to different solutions so I know you&amp;#39;ve heard this a lot if we had a dollar for every time we&amp;#39;ve heard it we&amp;#39;d be we&amp;#39;d be well off but it&amp;#39;s then why don&amp;#39;t they just put a grocery store in that neighborhood that&amp;#39;s yeah but I think those Market those market-based Solutions that&amp;#39;s not that&amp;#39;s not really going to be enough that we need to look at alternatives to that when it tiered grocery stores where you can either go shop for free or you shop based on your income or and how retail is involved in redistributing that produce I know that&amp;#39;s a big that&amp;#39;s a big Focus for Kroger which I&amp;#39;m excited to hear from them today um I think you need to involve and I&amp;#39;ve seen this involving the community and talking about what do they need what do they want and looking at that resource mapping of what&amp;#39;s already existing there and then investing in those Solutions absolutely I love that tiered approach because really when we think about it Crossroads does huge partnership with one of our local institutions UT Southwestern and people are always saying how do the two of you a community organization and a major institution of learning do all of this amazing research that is literally revolutionizing the way pantries and Community Markets are Distributing food and I say because we choose to we choose to so one of the things that people are always saying to me as well about the grocery store I&amp;#39;m like that&amp;#39;s great let&amp;#39;s bring a grocery store let&amp;#39;s also bring a grocery store that has a community market attached to it so that we can meet the needs of the low-income families that can&amp;#39;t afford the grocery store they can use their SNAP benefits in the grocery store but we&amp;#39;re forgetting that there&amp;#39;s a middle group there&amp;#39;s a middle group that they can afford some things in the grocery store but not everything and so how can retailers and Community organizations partner in the exact same space again proximity and allow that whole Continuum of community members access to the food that they need and the right that they have to have food if we can do it as a small non-profit organization in a very large institution it can be done and when I think about the future of food that&amp;#39;s what it is it is the decision for big organizations small organizations community-led efforts and large Retail Partners to choose that it&amp;#39;s not always easy and there are challenges but that we are going to create a solution for this that is about access for everyone to have the right to food I think that&amp;#39;s important note to end on too because we are already have the tools to solve this problem we have more than enough food in the United States to feed everyone plus some and I know climate change has been talked about and absolutely this is a huge part of it is how it&amp;#39;s being produced how it&amp;#39;s being distributed and then the amount of waste so if we have the tools already it is go to me going to that in the community talking even by neighborhood about what would work the best here and making it culturally relevant to that Community looking at their distribution models looking at those locally LED Solutions but we have the tools already so I think for the future of food it is that accessibility that proximity but also us connecting and talking to each other which is a huge part of what we&amp;#39;re doing today to look at connecting the dots and what would work and thinking outside the box on different kinds of markets different kinds of distribution what&amp;#39;s already in that community that we can provide healthy access to food because we have it we have all the tools I was recently at an event where the speaker said that we could fill and if you&amp;#39;ve ever that we know people are listening and are here from all over the world but Texas stadium everybody knows the Dallas Cowboys the ATT Stadium out there they can fill it eight times eight times with the amount of food that we waste with the amount of food that we waste and that&amp;#39;s massive amount of food that is just thrown away every day and so when we think about how again we partner together to meet in the middle Kroger is one of our great Partners we actually receive reclamated food from them that we&amp;#39;re able to redistribute back out in the community it&amp;#39;s all shelf stable but there&amp;#39;s an opportunity for that to be produce as well so again we know those large institutions and Community organizations can work together so I want to leave you and I&amp;#39;ll ask Wendy to do the same in our last minute with what you can do there are three things who is your local organization that you need to be spending some time with and trying to understand how they are using community-led Solutions and how you can partner with them and then who are our business owners investors who can invest in those Partnerships because it&amp;#39;s important we can&amp;#39;t assume that the non-profit can do it because they don&amp;#39;t have the money I promise we don&amp;#39;t um and we shouldn&amp;#39;t assume that it&amp;#39;s all the responsibility of the retailers either but it&amp;#39;s a collective effort and a collaborative effort to come together and find the solution at the table with all of us and particularly because we&amp;#39;ve decided that food is a human right winning I think I would have you all do a call to action to ask this question in your own communities I know Austin has a great Coalition already that is looking at their food system that I&amp;#39;m excited to hear from today so shout out to Austin for being a part of the solution but ask in your own cities is there a coalition is there a group that is made up of all of the entities that are involved in addressing food inequity from Hospital Systems to education it&amp;#39;s they&amp;#39;re all that they should all be at the table and in addition to Food Service organizations in addition to retailers so go back to your communities and ask that question is does that exist because if it does that means that they&amp;#39;ve started the conversation which is important to connect the dots to really resolve this issue and if it doesn&amp;#39;t advocate for that in your own Community because if they&amp;#39;re not talking to each other then that&amp;#39;s that solution they may be missing so really talk to your elected officials talk to your community leaders does that exist in your community if it doesn&amp;#39;t all right well thank you all very much for your time today [Music] thank you [Music]

Transcript for:Strengthening Families: Building Nutrition Stable Communities

Transcript for:
Strengthening Families: Building Nutrition Stable Communities