RWJF Interview with Prince George’s County PLACE MATTERS Team: Addressing Food Inequality

PLACE MATTERS is a national initiative of the Joint Center, designed to build the capacity of local leaders around the country to identify and improve social, economic, and environmental conditions that shape health. Interviews with six of the PLACE MATTERS teams were featured last week in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s NewPublicHealth blog. Follow along as we post excerpts throughout the week on why #PlaceMatters is key to eliminating health disparities.

Below is an excerpt from the Prince George’s County, Maryland PLACE MATTERS team:

The Prince George’s County, Maryland Place Matters team is addressing food inequity by establishing a Food Policy Council and working with the county’s recreation department to design and implement after-school healthy eating and active-living programs. The project is beginning with the waterfront towns of Bladensburg, Colmar Manor, Cottage City and Edmonston, which have drafted a Community Action Plan with strategies on how to reduce chronic disease in Prince George’s County.

…“It’s not just about having farmers markets, but really beginning to demonstrate and broaden our reach in a way that people are seeing a kind of moving of the needle from having some major chronic diseases in the poor towns and in the county to seeing a movement where these strategies are actually working,” he said [Prince George’s  County PLACE MATTERS co-leader David Harrington]. “That’s where evaluation is going to come in—it’s going to help us build a narrative that these communities are worth investing in.”

Click here to read the full interview.

Morgan McLeod is the Program Assistant and New Media Strategist at the Joint Center