The Healthy Incentives Pilot (HIP) tested a way of making fruits and vegetables more affordable for participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assis­tance Program (SNAP). Under HIP, SNAP partici­pants received a financial incentive for purchasing fruits and vegetables. The HIP evaluation used a random assignment research design.

Specifically, 7,500 Hampden County SNAP households were randomly selected to partic­ipate in HIP, while the remaining 47,595 households continued to receive SNAP benefits as usual. The final evaluation report presents findings on the impacts of HIP on fruit and vegetable consumption and spending, the processes involved in implementation and operating HIP, impacts on stakeholders, and the costs associated with the pilot.

Ride New Orleans’ analysis in this report highlights several critical findings.

1. By the end of 2012, just 36% of the pre-Katrina transit service offered by the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) in 2005 had been restored – although 86% of New Orleans’ population had returned to the city.
2. Service reductions have been worst in areas where transit service is needed most: low-income neighborhoods, communities of color, and areas where people have less access to personal vehicles
3. The RTA’s  is operating at a significant deficit every year and will soon run out of cash reserve funds. Some of the basic causes of the deficit are clear: our transit system costs more to operate than comparable systems and it charges lower fares. Yet, to date, the conversation about correcting the deficit has centered only on a potential fare increase. The findings in this report indicate that any sustainable solution to the deficit will need to involve lowering the costs of service as well as increasing revenues of all types.

SNAP allows households to deduct unreimbursed medical expenses over $35 per month from their income in calculating their net income for SNAP purposes to more realistically reflect the income they have available to purchase food.  This, in turn, could potentially qualify them for higher SNAP benefits. While the medical expense deduction plays an important role in ensuring that households with high medical costs receive adequate benefits, it is underutilized.

This report shares how our Double Up Food Bucks program grew from a small pilot in Detroit to a statewide success story that supported more than 200,000 low-income families and more than 1,000 farmers in 2013 alone, and has had a greater than $5 million effect on Michigan’s economy.

The eight Get Healthy Philly (GHP) markets—opened between 2010 and 2011 in partnership with the Department of Public Health—and The Food Trust’s other farmers’ markets continue to grow along various measures of success: SNAP sales, Philly Food Bucks redemptions, customer and farmer survey data, WIC and Senior FMNP sales, customer counts, and number of operating market days. This report summarizes and evaluates the impact, reach and key lessons learned from the 2013 farmers’ market season and the fourth season of the Philly Food Bucks program.

The food system works for some, but fails too many of us.  Yet, we already have a glimpse of the possibility of a just and healthy food system.  To get there, we must use a critical race lens to diagnose what is wrong with our current system, assess entry points for change, and determine ways that we can work together to build a better system for all of us.  This report shares an analysis of what it means to build a racially equitable food system – from field to farm to fork – and lays out steps toward achieving that goal.

In this report, CSI Food Equity Fellow Shorlette Ammons describes the realities of current and past food systems from the perspectives of Southern women of color.  Shorlette argues that we can achieve equitable food systems change by: 1) changing the narrative; 2) identifying food systems policy that directly affects women and children; 3) developing women of color leadership to lead the policy change; 4) building capacity and developing organizations; and 5) finding ways to sustain family farms.