Houston-Galveston is characterized by overall economic strength and resilience, but wide racial gaps in income, health, and opportunity coupled with declining wages, a shrinking middle class, and rising inequality place the region’s economic success and future at risk. Our analysis showed the region already stands to gain a great deal from addressing racial inequities. If racial gaps in income had been closed in 2012, the regional economy would have been $243.3 billion stronger: a 54 percent increase. Download the equity profile, summary, and addendum with the GDP analysis.

Media: Study: Urgently Provide More Educational and Employment Opportunities for Hispanics in Southeast Texas (en Español)

Advocacy efforts to improve access to healthy food at the local, state, and federal level have led to the creation of financing programs to support healthy food retail in underserved communities nationwide.

One key effort, Voices for Healthy Kids Initiative, led by the American Heart Association and The Food Trust, is advocating for state-wide policies to promote healthy food financing and corner store programs in key states across the country. This webinar will provide an overview of the Voices for Healthy Kids Initiative and discuss how advocates and community leaders can tap into resources to support state-level healthy food access efforts. Experts will discuss key successes from the field and share best practices.

For the Tohono O'odham Tribe in southwestern and central Arizona, food is the foundation of health, culture, community, family, and economies. Since 1996, the grassroots community organization Tohono O’odham Community Action (TOCA) has been dedicated to improving the health, cultural vitality, sustainability, and economic revitalization for the Tohono O’odham Nation.

This fall, thanks to TOCA’s new school food enterprise, Desert Rain Food Services, 700 children on the Tohono O'odham Nation will be served healthier school food sourced from local farmers. TOCA received a $300,000 Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) grant to pilot a school food service enterprise that supports healthier eating and a strong indigenous food economy.

Illustrates the connection between improved healthy food access and resulting economic and community development, encouraging readers to include assessment of economic outcomes in their healthy food access research agenda, and provides evidence to support decision makers in advancing healthy food policies.

With so many people, especially low-income people, affected by diet-related health conditions, building a connection between healthy foods and the doctor's office may be one of the most effective ways to improve health outcomes.

 Learn how you can develop an equitable food hub in your own community.  This webinar highlights how food hub operations are creating a more equitable and inclusive food system and discuss lessons learned and strategies for success.

Mandela MarketPlace grew out of grassroots community organizing efforts to shift resource dynamics, giving residents access to healthy food retail and neighborhood development funding. Incorporated in 2004, Mandela MarketPlace is a nonprofit organization that currently works in partnership with local farmers, local residents, and community-based businesses to build health, wealth, and assets through cooperative food enterprises.

Read this in-depth case study and accompanying photo essay for more information. 

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.