‘Food Equity’ Grant’s Racial Parameters a Form of ‘Apartheid,’ Critic Says

‘Food Equity’ Grant’s Racial Parameters a Form of ‘Apartheid,’ Critic Says

Blue Cross Blue Defend of North Carolina Basis is giving a a few-calendar year, $300,000 grant to progress “healthy foods fairness,” but numerous corporations that operate to increase access to balanced meals in minority populations will need not implement.

Certainly, some businesses that make use of a majority nonwhite team and have a vast majority-nonwhite board of directors quickly are disqualified from the grant.

Certainly, an business committed to “food equity” that employs mostly black, Latino, and other racial minorities and has a vast majority-minority leadership just cannot get the grant if its CEO is considered white.

This is not some declare critics are earning about the grant, either—it arrives straight from the horse’s mouth, from Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina itself.

“We have received inquiries about eligibility from companies that have a majority people today of coloration employees, and employees leadership, and white CEO,” a basis representative stated in a “Healthy Foods Equity” webinar Feb. 2. “So provided the spirit of this opportunity Sheila and I shared earlier, these businesses are not eligible for this particular option.” 

The “Advancing Healthy Foodstuff Equity” grant, which will award $100,000 per 12 months, per organization to up to 10 companies, restrictions eligibility to teams “that are led by, serving, and accountable to American Indian, Black, Latino, other Persons of Colour, and members of immigrant communities.”

Underneath “organization qualities,” the foundation’s webpage lists a few racial requirements: the government director or CEO should be a member of a racial minority or “from an immigrant community” the neighborhood the group serves is primarily racial minority or immigrant and the staff and board “reflect the local community served.”

“Our foodstuff technique makes an ample supply of foods, nonetheless lots of individuals in North Carolina wrestle to protected the important nutritious food items for on their own or their spouse and children,” the foundation’s webpage states. “American Indian, Black, Latino, other Men and women of Colour, and associates of immigrant communities are disproportionately impacted by foodstuff insecurity thanks to systemic barriers ensuing from generations of public guidelines, institutional procedures, and social norms making and reinforcing inequities between racial and ethnic groups.”

The grant aims to develop organizations’ “ability to engage in advocacy for transformational changes that progress equitable access to nutritious food items.” The webpage implies that stringent eligibility prerequisites are required since “nonprofits led by folks of color have historically faced, and even now facial area, considerable disparities in funding by philanthropic businesses, which has deprived them of needed assets.”

The Blue Cross Blue Protect of North Carolina Basis frames the grant as fulfilling “a central tenet of our formal racial equity dedication.”

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, board chair at Do No Hurt, criticized the grant in a assertion Friday to The Day-to-day Sign. Do No Hurt is an corporation of medical practitioners, nurses, and wellness care experts that speaks out towards medical abuses, significantly in the realm of experimental gender hormones and surgical procedures.

“If at any time there was a lousy strategy, the notion that we ought to start to individual our region together racial strains is amongst the worst,” Goldfarb, a kidney professional, stated. “The approach by the North Carolina Blue Cross Blue Protect organization usually takes divisiveness to a new stage. Even acquiring a leader of an business who is white is adequate to stop the entity, which apparently serves minority communities, from participating in a grant software.”

“Do Individuals seriously want this sort of apartheid?” he asked.

Blue Cross Blue Defend of North Carolina Foundation did not reply to a number of requests for comment on the grant’s eligibility or the criticism about it.

North Carolina Legal professional Typical Josh Stein, a Democrat, declined to comment on the grant’s legality.

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Working at the intersection of nutrition and health equity | News

Working at the intersection of nutrition and health equity | News

December 5, 2022—In this Big 3 Q&A, Cindy Leung, assistant professor of public health nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, discusses a recent paper she co-authored linking food insecurity and food addiction, as well as her other research efforts. 

Q: Tell us about your recent study and the interesting findings around food insecurity.

A: Food insecurity is a socioeconomic condition of limited access to affordable and healthy food. In my prior research, I found that people experiencing food insecurity are more likely to have poorer quality diets and are at higher risk for chronic conditions. Food addiction is a newer paradigm where we’re seeing experiences of withdrawal and other symptoms similar to those, for example, of alcohol abuse, as a result of eating highly processed foods. Knowing that highly processed foods are abundant in low-income neighborhoods, we wondered if people who are food insecure might be more vulnerable to food addiction.

In two different samples—one of low-income pregnant women in the San Francisco Bay area, and another of mothers of preadolescent children in southeast Michigan—we found a consistent and significant positive association between food insecurity and food addiction, even after adjusting for sociodemographic factors like education, race/ethnicity, and income level.

In our study, we couldn’t tease apart the mechanisms behind this link, but I believe that stress and ubiquitous access to highly processed foods are big components. Food insecurity is a source of chronic stress—a constant cognitive process to manage one’s food resources in relation to the family’s food needs. This chronic stress may alter the reward system to overconsume highly processed foods, increasing the risk of food addiction over time. The combination of high stress and easy access to highly palatable foods may also explain the higher risks of other chronic diseases that we’ve seen in relation to food insecurity.

Q: What other research questions are you looking at?

A: When we talk about interventions for food insecurity, we automatically go to our federal food programs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen swift expansions of our biggest nutrition programs, showing that they are important levers to reduce food insecurity during national emergencies. My colleagues and I are evaluating some of these recent policies. I am also really interested in seeing how poverty alleviation programs might reduce food insecurity. Programs and policies that address the minimum wage or reduce unemployment could have secondary impacts on preventing food insecurity, which is so intimately tied to poverty.

Separate from this, I am interested in testing and evaluating environmental interventions to improve dietary intake. I have been involved in some large-scale interventions to reduce sugar-sweetened beverage consumption. Currently, I am working with a team at the University of Michigan to test various dining hall changes to reduce red meat consumption, which is an important goal for both health and sustainability reasons.

Q: What does it mean to you as an alumna to be back at the School as a faculty member?

I am excited and humbled to be back at Harvard Chan School, where I got my foundational training and launched my career. Now, ten years later, I think I have a more holistic perspective of how I can take my work to the next stage. I also feel very privileged to work alongside my former mentors and colleagues, and the increasingly talented pool of students that we have.

Overall, I am really optimistic about growing my research program at the School, focusing on the intersection of nutrition and health equity. I am deeply committed to serving the public health community in that space.

—Amy Roeder