Episode: 019: Making Healthy Food Available to All with The Food Trust

Organization:The Food Trust is a nationally recognized nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that everyone has access to affordable, nutritious food and information to make healthy decisions. Headquartered in Philadelphia, The Food Trust works with neighborhoods, schools, grocers, farmers and policymakers in the city and across the country to develop a comprehensive approach to improved food access that combines nutrition education and greater availability of affordable, healthy food.

Topic:How the Food Trust brings healthy food options to underserved communities

In This Episode:1:33 Introduction to this episode.2:05 Introduction of Kamaryn Norris.3:03 What does the Food Trust do, and what is Kamaryn’s role?4:50 What is the Food Trust’s origin story?7:09 What impact is the Food Trust having?9:15 How can others make something like the Food Trust happen in their community?10:40 What are the biggest food challenges that our country faces, and how is the Food Trust helping overcome those?12:26 Kamaryn shares her work with healthy food finance programs.15:50 How can people find out more about the Food Trust and get involved with the work of the Food Trust?17:12 What would the future Kamaryn say about the work that is being done now?

Guest:Kamaryn Norris is a Project Associate for the National Campaign for Healthy Food Access at the Food Trust, a Philadelphia-based, national non-profit with the mission of ensuring everyone has access to affordable, nutritious foods and information to make healthy decisions. Kamaryn advocates for policies that support the development of grocery stores across the country in areas that lack access to healthy foods and facilitates the National Working Group, which ensures that access is equitable and reaching the most vulnerable populations. She also works on The Healthy Food Access Portal, an online resource that connects community members, retailers, and advocates to an array of news, strategies, and ideas to promote access to healthy food. Kamaryn believes that it is a basic human right to be able to have a healthy diet that is good for you, no matter where you live. An Atlanta native, Kamaryn earned dual bachelor’s degrees in Sociology and Rhetoric & Public Advocacy from Temple University. She enjoys playing and watching tennis, traveling, and has a love for the snow and all things cold weather.Kamaryn Norris LinkedIn-https://www.linkedin.com/in/Kamaryn

Take Away Quotes:“We work with adult nutrition education, we also work in schools with youth to help them be leaders around healthy food eating, we also have a farmers market program, we put nutritious into corner stores because for a lot of people that’s the only place where they can get food at all, and we work on local, state, and federal policy change to encourage grocery store development.”

“I really think of this as it’s a human right to be able to eat real food so you can live a happy life. It’s a social justice issue really and it’s something that is very complex and very complicated and we’re always learning.”

“What we’ve been seeing from this is that we’re reaching people that are often hard to get to in the current health system. We’re seeing largely black men that are coming and frequenting these events and they’re bringing their families and people they know. So it’s really all about meeting people where they are for access.”

“There’s shorter term impact that you can see and you can measure but then there’s much longer terms and those are the health impacts and that’s our ultimate goal and what drives us.”

Resources:The Food Trustwww.thefoodtrust.org

The Healthy Food Access Portalwww.healthyfoodaccess.org

Presidio Graduate Schoolhttp://www.presidio.edu

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