Building Team Chemistry: The Bigger Picture Behind Cows & Climate
Conor McCabe
Animal Biology Graduate Student, UC Davis
Although Austin, Texas, is often ranked as a healthy city, it also has high rates of food insecurity and obesity, especially among low-income populations. However, opening grocery stores in low-income food deserts can have the unintended effect of increasing property values, risking displacement of long-time residents.
Austin launched the Healthy Foods Access Initiative to provide alternatives for physical and economic access to healthy food. The initiative includes different strategies, such as financial incentives to purchase fruit and vegetables, strategic placement of mobile produce trucks and farm stands at schools and housing complexes, and stocking produce in corner stores and gas stations.
Researchers at the UTHealth School of Public Health in Austin, in collaboration with Sustainable Food Center, are modeling the impact of these strategies on people’s fruit and vegetable purchase and consumption, and food security. The results will inform the best ways to implement and expand healthy food initiatives.
In addition, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, FFAR expanded the existing grant to the researchers to assess how food systems — especially emergency food systems — operate and adapt in times of stress.
This research is modeling how a multipronged approach to promoting healthy diets best provides access and education without risking gentrification.
The overarching goal is to understand how inter-related and inter-dependent food access interventions can lead to sustainable solutions that promote healthy eating and increase economic opportunities.
We leverage knowledge from investments in food systems to develop sustainable solutions promoting health and economic opportunities. This research combines data from Austin’s current strategies with new, long-term data to model the impact of strategic scale-up.
Austin Public Health