Healthy Habits Initiative

Food insecurity and access to basic needs

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

Watts, Willowbrook, and Compton are historically underserved food insecure communities that have repeatedly suffered from a lack of resources and systemic neglect. This region lacks access to grocery stores offering healthy foods and fresh produce that the community wants and deserves. On average, there are 15,000 individuals to a store in South LA, compared to 5,000 - 6,000 people per store in the more affluent Westside. There is also a distinct difference in the quality and variety of food and produce, forcing community members to travel to get high quality fresh fruits and vegetables. This combination of factors and consistent divestment leads to serious health disparities and comorbidities such as Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and obesity. The HHI will help to mitigate this by providing greater food access, access to physical activity and reinforce the necessary lifestyle changes to build a stronger healthier community.

The HHI program consists of a series of weekly food distributions and recipe demonstrations, exercise classes offered five times / week, and 2 community building seasonal outdoor activities (i.e. surfing, skiing, etc.). The recipe demonstrations will provide community members with a vegetable forward recipe and ingredients to prepare the meal at home. We will acquire locally sourced veggies and ensure the recipes are culturally relevant and affordable to encourage the continued use. Each series will last six weeks, will be free and open to the public, and offered three times / year. We will distribute a survey from the LA County DPH at the beginning and end of each workshop series to gather qualitative data related to habit changes (i.e. diet, exercise, etc.). In addition, HHI will offer free access to a health clinic for 30 participants per series. The clinic will gather quantitative data related to health outcomes (A1C, blood pressure, weight, etc) of each participant.

Through HHI, we are supporting our community to meet its needs for greater food access and aid in mitigating the major health disparities that have been caused through redlining. We are also providing exposure to outdoor activities (i.e. skiing and surfing) that many members in this community don’t generally have the opportunity to participate in due to expense and transportation. AMiA is working to build a community farm and farmstand in Willowbrook which provide space for community members to access green space and locally grown produce. This work reinforces our mission to provide greater access healthy, organic, culturally relevant, affordable food to communities that are commonly ignored. Through both these programs, we will aid in creating healthier, stronger underserved areas in LA County.

Success of this program will be measured by changes in health outcomes and healthy habits of the community members and cohort of Participants that attend the HHI series. AMiA will measure impact in the following ways:
We will distribute a survey from the LA County Department of Public Health specifically designed to measure qualitative experience and impact of the HHI series in regards to changes in eating and exercise habits of the community members and the cohort of Participants.
The Participants will be provided with two clinic visits at the beginning and end of the program where we will gather information in regards to weight, BMI, blood pressure, A1C, etc to gather statistical data to measure these health outcome changes throughout the duration of the program. There will be two clinical visits in the beginning of the program and at the end to demonstrate the changes. This data will be used to refine future AMiA programs and HHI workshops.