Greetings—

Access to quality food options is a basic building block for dignity, health, economic opportunity, and cultural connection. Yet for many rural and urban families, the closest full service-grocery store is over an hour away.

A new blog post from the Local Data for Equitable Communities grant program, a collaboration between Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, explores how three communities are leveraging community data and local insights to address structural barriers to quality food access.

Get Healthy Utah, in partnership with the Southeast Utah Health Department and city leaders, is developing community food audits and mapping tools to assess walkability, transportation options, and proximity to quality and culturally relevant food stores to influence decisions about land use, transportation, and food access services.
The Nashville Food Project is engaging residents to map food availability alongside indicators of transit access and conditions to identify gaps. The resulting dashboard can inform policy that improves transit options, bus stop infrastructure, and grocery store access.
Through its People’s Food Plan, the United Way of Greater Knoxville is using surveys to identify residents’ barriers to accessing healthy food and challenges for entrepreneurs in the food system to guide investments that address community needs.

These examples demonstrate the importance of pairing actionable data with lived experience to inform policies that are tailored to community needs and support healthier outcomes.

Stay tuned for more insights from the Local Data for Equitable Communities program’s grantees and please send an email to [email protected] if you would like to learn more.

Thanks,