THE TENNESSEAN
February 4, 2009
By Nancy DeVille
The Food Security Partners of Middle Tennessee was recently awarded a $225,000 grant to fight childhood obesity in Nashville's neighborhoods that lack quality grocery stores.
Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the grant will allow the agency to launch the Re/Storing Nashville Campaign, a new program that will focus on three low-income neighborhoods characterized as food deserts: East Nashville/Cayce Homes, Edgehill and North Nashville. Food deserts are communities in which there are no supermarkets and little access to fresh produce.
The Re/Storing Nashville Campaign seeks to bring supermarkets to these neighborhoods by developing a leadership team that will assess the challenges of establishing grocery stores to serve these neighborhoods and also educating decision-makers about the need for access to healthy, affordable foods.
"If we want to curb the epidemic of childhood obesity, one of the things we must do is make sure people have easy access to healthy food," said Cassi Johnson, Food Security Partners director.