Notes from the second Built Environment Cohort Call on June 28, 2016.

1. Built Environment Cohort
Call #2
Tuesday, June 28
Site Participants:
Albuquerque, Bronx, Houston, Los Angeles, Springfield
Other Participants: Courtney Bartlett (TA Coordinator), Kenisha Bethea and Katie Miller (PL), Rachel
Keller Eisman (BUILD ED), DASH Grantee and Staff.
The Food Trust – Jean Wallace, Development Director for The Food Trust
 The Food Trust is based in Philadelphia, PA. Its mission is to ensure that everyone has access to
affordable healthy foods and can lead healthy lives. They provide a range of programs with
direct services in the Philly are including nutrition education in schools, with a focus on bringing
healthy food outlets into underserved areas. They also have a network of 25 farmers markets in
high need areas where healthy food access is limited and promote and accept SNAP and other
food assistance benefits at these markets. The Food Trust has worked around the country with
local organizations to advocate for healthy food financing initiatives.
 The Healthy Corner Store Program started in 2004 as an outgrowth of nutrition education they
do in public schools. Read more here.
Q&A
How did you initially secure funding for this, and how do you sustain funding for this kind of work?
 The Food Trust originally received a 2-yr grant from the AstraZeneca Healthcare Foundation,
which focuses on community-based heart disease prevention work. They also received funding
from a family foundation in Philadelphia (Edna G. Kynett Memorial Foundation) who has a focus
on heart disease prevention. Since you can't rely long-term on foundation funding, they found
some non-profit hospital partners to support this with community benefit dollars. Thomas
Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia was able to sustain it with no additional funding, because it
was already identified as an area in their CHNA and implementation plan, so community benefit
dollars were allocated to it. The program is beginning to work with upper level Pharm D
students and the local college is eager to have these practice level opportunities for their
students - That's another potential sustainable funding source.
How can we help support hospitals to think creatively around using their community benefit dollars to
support programs like this? Was that an easy ask for The Food Trust? How did you approach that?
 The Thomas Jefferson Center for Urban Health was already deeply immersed in all elements of
this because the community benefits part of the hospitals work was first and foremost in their
mind. Because hospitals are so big and complex and not primarily focused on community
outreach and prevention, it’s a matter of finding the best folks in the hospital to talk to.
How do you convince children to not buy the soda and the chips and instead buy fruit and water?
 Philadelphia recently passed the first soda tax in a major city in the US. It is rare in public health
to actively discourage people from the bad choices. Much more time and energy goes into
encouraging them to choose the healthy choices. If you go into one of their healthy corner
stores, you'll see healthier foods with bright signage and at eye level right when you walk in.
Despite that, it’s still hard to get children to choose the healthy option. However, they do feel

2. that a great many more of them are making healthier choices. They also work in ~70 public
schools in Philadelphia to provide nutrition education including lessons on making healthy
choices in corner stores.
How do you incentivize or encourage corner store operators to sign on to the program?
 Around 60% of operators in Philadelphia agreed to participate in the program. When they
enroll, The Food Trust works with them in a step-wise process offering four healthy products,
and those that like the program can then work with them to go to the next stage of developing
their business. There are two main factors that indicate they will say yes, 1) smart business
owners are smart and strategic about growing their business. All big businesses are interested in
getting into the market of healthy stores. 2) Many owners live near or above their stores, and
they have seen the problems associated with obesity and heart disease in their communities,
plus they feel good about it if they can have healthier products in their stores, have the same
revenue as before, and do a good thing in their community. They like the technical assistance
and training that The Food Trust can provide. However, this is not every corner store owner's
cup of tea and many aren’t' interested.
 Incentive - staff targets a corner store, explains the program to them, and if they decide they
want to participate they receive a small amount of money to cement the deal.
Can you describe any challenges and barriers you’ve faced while establishing this program?
 Raising awareness of the changes that have taken place inside the corner store and
neighborhood is very important. If people don't take advantage of healthy offerings, then it's
not a successful program. For the Heart smarts Program, they would like to encourage folks to
come back to the store from time to time for additional screenings. They're beginning to work
with their first CHW to increase awareness of owner stores. The CHW is a Hispanic corner store
owners who is committed to the program.
 Evaluation is challenging - funders want to know if people eat differently because the corner
store program is there. One way they do evaluation is through surveying people who participate
in nutrition education (what they know and what they intend to do with healthy food info). The
ideal would be to collect info on sales of healthy foods in corner stores, but because these are
small businesses, many don't have ability to collect and share aggregate sales data. They've
been able to put in point of sale systems in some stores (computerized cash register) but not all.
Open Discussion – All
 Albuquerque Mobile Market - Jim Bullard (Go Adelante) shared info on Albuquerque’s mobile
market and storehouse food pantry. Mobile markets are markets with healthy food products
made available throughout areas in Albuquerque. These markets only offer food that's been
grown by healthy growers. Last year, they collected data on folks coming to mobile market using
paper forms (point of sale type data) where they record people purchase and what they pay for
it. They also want to collect demographic info on all folks coming to the market. This year they
are collaborating with Presbyterian Healthcare to run the mobile market. They received a
referral from the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food & Agriculture (a group out of Washington
DC) using a product developed for the iPad. The Albuquerque team contacted them to see if
they would modify the software for New Mexico. The team used BUILD funding to support
modifications to that software and the app on the iPad. Once it’s in place, they will be able to

3. collect data from people who purchased it last year, and repeat data. Email Jim if you’re
interested in learning more about the app and how to purchase it.
 Albuquerque is experiencing some challenges getting the data. Presbyterian Health Systems is
working with them on a data-use agreement. Example of the restriction - last year they could
send out text messages and emails to everyone who attended the markets (Saying when the
next markets would be, etc.). They haven't been able to do that this year because they don't
have access to the information. That was an important part of the whole project.
 Jean Wallace – The Food Trust also dealt with HIPPA privacy concerns in their corner stores. To
the extent that they share data, it's deidentified, deaggregate data.
Conclusion and next steps – Kenisha/Courtney
 Article in NYT on Food Pantries – referenced by Jim Bullard (Albuquerque)
 The Food Trust Resources:
 Main Webpage
 Healthy Corner Store Overview
 Practical Playbook Story on Healthy Corner Store Initiative
 Built Environment Resource List has been updated with additional Food Access resources.