Common Ground Church Pastor Steve Fortenberry, who also serves as the Executive Director of Goodness Grows, describes a Workforce Food Center concept as a way to create economic opportunities while improving workplace health and wellness through improved food access. Steve describes the increasing costs of poor health on the long-term competitiveness of the U.S. workforce. His concept involves working with an existing steel manufacturer to capture waste heat in a greenhouse that produces local food that is distributed to workers through a wellness program. This concept could work well with many manufacturing facilities in Northeast Ohio that can both invest in the wellness of their employees and productively utilize waste heat as a source of heat for extending the growing season.
Videos tagged as 'public health'
Mark Winne, food activist and author of Closing the Food Gap, discusses the challenges of "rural food deserts". While significant attention is paid to issues around food access and public health in urban areas, Winne describes how more than 800 rural counties in the United States have are considered food desert counties. The rates of obesity in these areas is higher than obesity rates found in metropolitan areas. While rural food deserts are particularly concentrated in southern and western parts of Ohio, Northeast Ohio has significant rural areas where food access is an issue. Ultimately, Winne suggests that we need to think of urban and rural revitalization as ways to restore health in both areas.
A short documentary film produced by Theresa Desautels, a Cinema Studies major and recent graduate of Oberlin College, Hungry for Health feature s a day in the life of Willa Sparks; a woman who overcomes the environmental obstacle of living in a food desert, an inner-city neighborhood without easy access to a grocery store. Determined to give her family the healthy food that every person deserves, Willa takes an hour long bus ride at the first of every month to get to the closest grocery store. If healthy food won’t come to her, as her neighborhood is infested with fast food restaurants and corner stores, then she will go to it. This film was produced as a senior project. This film shows a close and personal view of how the challenge of food access affects many Cleveland residents. Includes commentary by Matt Carroll, director of Cleveland Public Health Department, Gigi Traore director of the Power Network, Grace Lee Boggs, author, and Brad Masi, co-founder of City Fresh.
This video features the Buckeye-Metro Fresh Stop, a collaboration between Metro Hospital and City Fresh. Located on the east side of Cleveland, the Fresh Stop brings fresh vegetables from local farms to residents of one of many neighborhoods in Cleveland that struggle with healthy food access. The staff at Metro Hospital use the Fresh Stop as a mechanism to provide both food access and education in nutrition, healthy lifestyle, and preventative health care. This shows one of many examples of how residents and institutions can collaborate in a neighborhood to improve healthy food access. Produced by Brad Masi, David Pearl, and Tom Kondilas, the makers of the film PolyCultures: Food Where We Live.
Local food systems tie in nicely with broader efforts to improve public health through more nutrient dense, less calorie dense foods.
This is a short clip from LESS Productions' feature length documentary PolyCultures: Food Where We Live. The movie is about the efforts to create a sustainable food production system in Northeast Ohio. In this clip, we hear commentary from experts Mark Winne and Punam Ohri-vachaspati, who explain the phenomenon known as a "food desert" and grocery stores have become fewer and farther between in urban communities.
For more info check out http://polycultures.blogspot.com