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December 2013

A Practitioner's Guide for Advancing Health Equity: Healthy Food in School, Afterschool, and Early Care and Education Environments

Overview

A Practitioner’s Guide for Advancing Health Equity: Community Strategies for Preventing Chronic Disease provides lessons learned and innovative ideas on how to maximize the effects of policy, systems and environmental improvement strategies—all with the goal of reducing health disparities and advancing health equity. 

The "Maximizing Healthy Food and Beverage Strategies to Advance Health Equity" section provides equity-oriented considerations, key partners, and community examples related to the design and implementation of key strategies, including food served in schools, afterschool, and early care and education environments.

Other strategies include:

December 2013

A Practitioner's Guide for Advancing Health Equity: Healthy Restaurants and Catering Trucks

Overview

A Practitioner’s Guide for Advancing Health Equity: Community Strategies for Preventing Chronic Disease provides lessons learned and innovative ideas on how to maximize the effects of policy, systems and environmental improvement strategies—all with the goal of reducing health disparities and advancing health equity. 

The "Maximizing Healthy Food and Beverage Strategies to Advance Health Equity" section provides equity-oriented considerations, key partners, and community examples related to the design and implementation of key strategies, including healthy restaurants and catering trucks.

Other strategies include:

December 2013

A Practitioner's Guide for Advancing Health Equity: Community Food Retail Environment

Overview

A Practitioner’s Guide for Advancing Health Equity: Community Strategies for Preventing Chronic Disease provides lessons learned and innovative ideas on how to maximize the effects of policy, systems and environmental improvement strategies—all with the goal of reducing health disparities and advancing health equity. 

The "Maximizing Healthy Food and Beverage Strategies to Advance Health Equity" section provides equity-oriented considerations, key partners, and community examples related to the design and implementation of key strategies, including those impacting the community food retail environment.

Other strategies include:

Transit Oriented Development that’s Healthy, Green and Just

Overview

Transit Oriented Development that’s Healthy, Green and Just asks a basic question about Puget Sound’s new light rail system – how do we ensure this massive public investment benefits all families? In Southeast Seattle neighborhoods the light rail has already accelerated gentrification and may lead to displacement of many communities of color into the suburbs. It’s not just a lack of affordable housing, though. Low-wage jobs keep family incomes down as real estate prices rise, creating pressure to leave. As it turns out, transit oriented development that ignores racial equity and job quality will short-change light rail’s potential environmental benefits

Filling the Financing Gap for Equitable Transit-Oriented Development

Overview

Filling the Financing Gap for Equitable Transit-Oriented Development describes the key components of a model system for equitable TOD, the most common challenges regional actors face in moving equitable TOD projects forward and a variety of strategies partners can use to address these challenges. The report includes recommendations for approaches to leveraging public and private funds, coordinating multiple actors, involving the community and managing issues around land use and assembly. LIIF and Enterprise co-authored the paper with support from Living Cities.

Fast Food Nation: Why Higher Wages for Workers Benefit Us All

From New York to San Diego, thousands of fast food workers have gone on strike for higher wages and the right to form unions. Roughly three million people – disproportionately people of color – work in fast food, earning a median wage of $8.94 an hour. Better pay would not only benefit them and their families; it also would strengthen the U.S. economy. Here's why:

  1. Increase consumer spending. Every $1 increase in the minimum wage increases a household's consumer spending by $2,800 a year, estimates the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank. Multiply that by three million fast food workers, and the nation would see tens of billions of dollars in new consumer spending.
  2. Create better-paying jobs in low-income neighborhoods. Fast food establishments tend to cluster in low-income neighborhoods where there are few other employment options, including in poor suburbs. Raising wages for fast food workers would provide better employment opportunities, helping to revitalize neighborhoods while we continue to work to improve food choices in these communities.
  3. Reduce strain on our public assistance programs. Restaurant workers, including fast food workers, are on public assistance programs like food stamps at twice the rate of the rest of the U.S. workforce, according to Saru Jayaraman from Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. More than 80 percent of fast food workers earn less than $10.10 an hour, or $18,500 per year, which means they are eligible for food stamps if they're in a family of two or more. Raising the wage would allow our public dollars to go towards necessary investments in infrastructure and education, not subsidizing employers for low-wage jobs. 
  4. Raise the floor for all. Higher wages for fast food workers would put upward pressure on other low-wage industries that hire from a similar pool of workers, like other restaurant work and retail. Restaurant, retail, and service occupations are projected to have the largest employment growth in the economy, and even though many who work in these occupations have some college education, these are among the few jobs that do not require a high school diploma. Raising the floor for these jobs is an essential step towards rebuilding a middle-class economy.
  5. Create better opportunities for the next generation. More than one in four fast food workers struggle to support at least one child. Research from the Partnership for America's Economic Success shows that an increase in household income to 150 percent of the poverty line (roughly $14/hour) during early childhood can lead to increased earnings – by as much as $200,000 over his or her lifetime.

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