Policy Initiatives
The CEED@Chicago Coalition is focused on policy change. Policy change calls for the involvement of grassroots community based organizations and partnership-building with organizations in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors that are not traditionally involved in public health policies and interventions to improve community health.
CEED@Chicago Coalition members identified policy areas they believed required the Coalition's attention: equitable distribution of food and health literacy . In order to assess the policy-change opportunities, an environmental scan was done for activities currently underway that are focused on changing those policies in the Chicago region.
The environmental scan revealed that food policy change was the focus of few organizations while exciting programs to increase healthy food in the region abounded. Health literacy was defined as the availability of Community Health Workers (CHW) to bring information about health to the communities. The environmental scan found that Illinois lagged behind other states in capitalizing on the educational resources represented by community health workers. Committees were formed and met to develop recommendations for the coalition. Planning of the CEED@Chicago's policy-change activities continues.
CEED@Chicago is moving forward on policy-change initiatives identified by the Coalition: increasing health literacy through community health workers, and increasing equitable distribution of healthy food. Working committees have been meeting since early March 2009
The Food Equity Policy Committee identified two foci for policy change: promoting the location production and distribution of healthy food and improving the data available to policy makers and researchers about the type of food available in communities. Both foci were presented to the CEED@Chicago Coalition in May 2009 and affirmed. Currently, the committee is coordinating the efforts of several organizations that are planning a tour of urban agriculture sites in Chicago for elected officials and policy level administrators. The purpose of the tour is to demonstrate to these officials that urban agriculture will prosper in their communities and that the expertise is available to help them. The committee is also gathering information on data collection in Chicago and the metropolitan area.
The Health Literacy/Community Health Workers Policy Committee has identified increasing and improving training of community health workers on healthy eating and physical activity as its main focus. At a recent meeting of organizations that train CHWs, it was evident that training in these two topics would be very helpful. It was also clear that the many groups present want to work together to improve training in not just these two topics, but in many others. CEED@Chicago will provide support to this group as it defines its agenda and moves forward with its work.
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