"Mechanisms Structuring Nutrition Equity in Neighborhood-based Food Systems"
Abstract
Food system problems, such as food insecurity and food apartheid, are entrenched especially in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. This presentation will review how these problems are the result of a broken food system and the need to move beyond tinkering around the edges to focus on solutions that treat the system as a whole. Nutrition equity will be introduced as a new goal to center community-driven food systems work in racialized neighborhoods highlighting domains of feedback to tip the food system to fairness.
Speaker Bio
An applied population health scientist and community psychologist, Dr. Darcy Freedman holds the Swetland Chair in Environmental Health Sciences and serves as the Director of the Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health at Case Western Reserve University, School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Freedman brings a transdisciplinary background to her applied research agenda, developing policy and systems-level interventions to promote health equity by addressing the complex interplay between public health and the environment. Dr. Freedman has a robust research program focused on the intersection of health equity, food systems, and community engagement. Her research is funded by federal agencies such as NIH and USDA as well foundations, including the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research that sponsored her food systems modeling study that she will be presenting on today. Dr. Freedman lives in Shaker Heights, Ohio with her husband and two boys.