An Open Invitation to Engage in CHIP Food Security Work

Good afternoon Buncombe County Food Security Leaders, 

Over the past two years there has been a convening of organizations under the CHIP umbrella leading efforts to eliminate food insecurity within our communities.  We are nearing the end of this CHIP 3-year cycle and, for the first time, our CHIP process is intentionally addressing how to ensure work around current CHIP priorities can continue regardless of what is prioritized for this next cycle.  

A part of this shift, the YMCA of Western North Carolina and ABIPA in partnership with MAHEC and Buncombe County have been tasked with championing efforts moving forward to address diabetes, with the YMCA taking lead on the convening of the Food Security group. With CHIP priorities potentially shifting (deemed CHIP 2.0) this has presented the opportunity to also reconfigure our Food Security Workgroup moving forward while honoring and building upon previous efforts where it makes sense. 

In conversation with several partners, we thought it best to first take a step back from large group meetings to formulate a small Thought Group of community champions to help drive strategic goals, priorities, and structure for our work moving forward. This group began to meet in July and has met several times since to help draft the strategic framework before calling a large, community meeting to present this vision.

After these conversations, we are now ready to re-convene and share what our Thought Group has created as a template moving forward. We will be hosting a work session on January 8th from 9-11 am at MAHEC in the “Blue Ridge B” room within their education building. And yes, there have been several previous dates that have been canceled due to weather and other factors.  

Prior to the meeting we will also be hosting a quick networking and coffee session starting at 8:30am. This will serve as an opportunity to ask any questions from the documents from past work and get settled for our time as a collective group. 

Please RSVP by January 4th to Cory Jackson to ensure that we have an accurate head count. 

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach out.

To set the stage for our time next week, HERE are some important documents pertaining to the CHIP work within Food Security over the past few years. We will use this as a starting point for our discussions but we wanted to ensure that everyone had a chance to review prior the meeting. The main page breaks down the history of the work and at the bottom you will find another link connecting to supporting documents. 

As always, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach out. 

This is an open invite for anyone who is currently working within food security related work in Buncombe County, please feel free to share with your partners as you see fit but please limit the number of representatives from each agency to 2

Cory Jackson

Director of Nutrition Services

Food Security Workgroup Progress and Hunger Month

In August we caught you up to date on what is happening as the Food Security Workgroup took a brief pause to consider what our work looks like as we move to reconvene with the YMCA serving as the convener and facilitator.  A Food Security Thought Group has been meeting regularly over the past few months to create a framework to re-launch the larger community group in the next couple of months. By leveraging the work that has already been completed, the hope is to draft a sustainable structure that allows for continued community collaboration for years to come. Be on the lookout for a community food forum date soon!

In the meantime, September was National Hunger Awareness Month and many of our organizations were working to raise awareness of hunger in Buncombe County and the region and what we are doing to address this critical issue as well as the resources to support this work.  Bruce Ganger, ED of Bounty and Soul wrote weekly opinion pieces during September that were featured in the Black Mountain News and the Asheville Citizen Times. You can find the pieces from Week 1, Week 2, Week 3  and Week 4 here.  And local food writer, Cathy Cleary spoke with many of our partners about the value of collaboration in addressing food security and published Collaboration is key but challenging for organizations fighting food insecurity in the Mountain Xpress.

CHIP Food Security 2.0 - August 2018

August 2018

Over the past two years there has been a convening of organizations under the CHIP umbrella leading efforts to eliminate food insecurity within our communities.  We are nearing the end of this CHIP 3-year cycle and, for the first time, our CHIP process is intentionally addressing how to ensure work around current CHIP priorities can continue regardless of what is prioritized for this next cycle.  

A part of this shift, the YMCA of Western North Carolina and ABIPA in partnership with MAHEC and Buncombe County are lead agencies for Diabetes in efforts moving forward with the YMCA taking lead on the convening of the Food Security group.

With CHIP priorities potentially shifting (deemed CHIP 2.0) this has presented the opportunity to also reconfigure our Food Security Workgroup moving forward while honoring and building upon previous efforts where it makes sense. 

In conversation with several partners, we thought it best to first take a step back from large group meetings to formulate a small Thought Group of community champions to help drive strategic goals, priorities, and structure for our work moving forward. This group began to meet in July and will meet three times to help draft the strategic framework before calling a large, community meeting to present this vision. Once this community meeting takes place the Thought Group will meet one more time to incorporate any feedback received before officially dissolving into a large community group moving forward.

In the meantime, our Food Security Collaborative has been engaged in providing input into this reset process to ensure the work to date is honored and built upon.  They have provided a summary of the work for the Thought Partner group, highlighting key work products.  In addition, a noteworthy highlight for the Collaborative is the report and recommendations from Leadership Asheville on potential models for collaboration that can help inform our food security work moving forward.  This record was also shared with the Thought Partner Group.

Additional noteworthy items for Food Security include a group being convened to consider how to best share information about food security assets and resources with service providers.  This work originated as MAHEC clinical staff is beginning to work with the YMCA mobile market and nutrition program.  The desire was to be able to connect patients with the resources that best meet their needs and not just providing connections to the YMCA resources.  This group has met twice and is exploring an easy to use online map.

Double Up Food Bucks continues to be a successful program.  A few highlights include:

• Individuals served: A total of 352 low income individuals receiving SNAP benefits compared to our stated objective of serving at least 150 low income individuals receiving SNAP benefits

• Produce $ spent: A total of $10,380 DUFB matching funds for produce purchases compared with our $10,960 stated objective in this area. We fully anticipate exceeding that goal within the next 2-3 months. 

• DUFB transactions: 2,845 DUFB transactions have been made, including those transactions in which DUFB were both spent and earned (goal was just 550 produce purchases with DUFB matching dollars) with an average of $21.45 of Double Up Food Bucks per DUFB expenditure transaction. This is with West Village Market only beginning the program in October of 2017. 

• Lessons learned: We have learned that the Point of Sale system is the number one barrier for this program operating smoothly. When the West Village Market launched in October they did not have their systems running smoothly, and the store owner believes that may have turned off some initial DUFB customers. The French Broad Food Co-op has struggled with convincing their POS software company to make changes to their system to allow the DUFB process to be fully automated. This means that they are still relying on paper coupons to award and recoup DUFB matching dollars, despite the high volume of customers there.

• Surprising win: The BC DHHS robo-call system can be an extremely effective way to reach many thousands of SNAP recipients in our targeted geographic area to alert them about the program. We timed this call so that it would be when both stores had ample time to smooth their DUFB transactional systems and when both stores are carrying enough locally grown produce to make the trip to the store to access DUFB worth it for new customers. Both stores are reporting a large increase in the number of DUFB related calls, visits, and applications being processed since the robo-call went out. 

• Next Steps: Requesting a USDA Waiver for Patchwork Urban Farms to become a third DUFB site in Buncombe County and in talks with Hopey and Company on S. French Broad to become a fourth. Also working closely with MountainWise for almost a year now to develop a transitional strategy to be able to hand over the Lead Agent role for the DUFB to them in the fall of 2018. 

Fall Update 2017

Double Up Food Bucks
DUFB has continued to see success with this pilot effort. West Village Market began participating in October as our second retail market.  To date we have 233 participants adding 63 in this quarter.  Over $4,600 of produce was purchased with the with DUFB matching funds!  This is with very little promotion effort.  

One of the biggest challenges so far has been related to what happens at the cash register with the point of sale software. DUFB participants are not able to complete a fully electronic transaction when using DUFB to purchase produce at the FBFC.  The FBFC has been trying to address this with their software vendor but they have been very slow to respond   West Village Market was able to have point of sale software customized for DUFB sales avoiding the challenge below with the FBFC and we hope to be able to address the FBFC challenges soon.

We are also excited to report that an application has been submitted by MountainWise to the USDA for a 3-year, $300,000 grant to expand DUFB in Buncombe and our western counties.

Food Security Collaborative
A subgroup of the Food Security Workgroup has been working to develop a plan for how to build a coordinated structure that allows us to share human resources and assets and to make referrals among our organizations as well as to appropriate safety net programs. The creation of a network structure via MOUs, operation guidelines and a shared measurement system will increase our visibility with community leaders and funders attracting new partners, funding and joint opportunities.  These actions will increase the capacity and sustainability of food security partners and demonstrate the impact of our collective work to address food security. We also recognize that policy and environmental approaches can have a significant impact in addressing food security and our collective voice has the potential to strengthen our advocacy efforts.  

A general action plan for the next 6 months, along with ground rules, a group agreement structure as well as a shared "elevator speech" and inital metrics have been developed for the next 6 months and Leadership Asheville is partnering with us to research existing models that we could apply to this process and will be presenting us with recommendations this spring.  

We also look to be moving forward again with our larger circle of food security workgroup members around shared measures and collaboration for our nutrition education and skill building work. 

Additional News and Activities

In preparation to increase technical support for data and evaluation, CHIP HIS staff worked with the Asheville Buncombe Food Policy Council and UNC Asheville to host an RBA training. This will help the ABFPC prepare to implement and evaluate the City of Asheville Food Action Plan just approved by City Council.  It will also enable UNCA faculty and students provide support with data needs of our CHIP partners.  The training is already paying off. A few days after the training a DUFB program support staff meet with a UNCA student to map out a project for Spring Semester. 

In early December, CHIP HIS staff help plan and host Increasing Healthy Food Access in Rural NC.  Aproximately 30 public health and nutrition professionals from across the region learned about from federal, state and local experts on food insecurity and the policies and practices that impact that security as well as highlighting innovative projects  happening in Western North Carolina and the lessons learned from each.  Two CHIP partners, Ali Caparian from Bounty and Soul and Nan Kramer from MountainWise and DUFB shared their innovative programs.

Moving toward Sustainability - Supporting a Food Security Network in Buncombe County

Food Security Workgroup members met on July 24th for a process to begin identifying what a potential formal collaborative process would look like to assist in expanding the capacity and sustainability of those nonprofits doing work around food security.   This process built on survey feedback from partners that identified shared values, barriers and supports to our work as well as look at funders and connectors being accessed across our partnership. 
A second meeting to complete this process will be held in August with the outcome of identifying a clear structure for collaboration and a detailed action plan for moving forward with an emphasis on innovation and substantive actions.

July Update on partner activities (note this meeting agenda was tight and the only partner sharing info this month was Bountiful Cities:

Bountiful Cities has been awarded funding through Aetna Foundation’s Cultivating Healthy Communities program for 18 months beginning in October of 2017. This highly competitive national grant program has chosen the Community Food Education Collaborative, a joint-project of FEAST, Women's Wellbeing and Development Foundation (WWD-F), and Bountiful Cities for an award amount of $53,000. These dollars will fund the bulk of 18 months of FEAST's cooking and gardening education at Hall Fletcher Elementary, 3 seasonal series of the 12 week Strong Roots youth community gardening education program with Bountiful Cities, and 18 months of resident-led cooking classes at the Hillcrest Resource Center with WWD-F. Additionally, the grant provides funds for WWD-F, FEAST, and Bountiful Cities to work together to cross-reference and compare programmatic components in order to improve each program's content and delivery. All three programs will be utilizing the CHIP Food Security Education & Skill Building Collaborative Measures to record the effectiveness of the programs' ability to increase measures related to participants' overall food security. This information will then be entered into the CHIP Scorecard in order to track and compare results across all participating Food Education programs in Asheville and Buncombe County. This grant is an example of the CHIP's Food Security Working Group beginning to effect results and increase collaboration among Asheville and Buncombe County non-profits.

The Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) has launched at the French Broad Food Coop!  Bountiful Cities was awarded funding from the WNC

Community Foundation for this pilot to increase access to fruits and 

DUFB Eligible Produce on Display!

vegetables for SNAP recipients. The DUFB program awards a dollar for each SNAP dollar used to purchase locally grown produce.These dollars can then be spent to purchase any other fruit and veggies purchased from the same establishment.

The program had a soft roll-out in late June to insure there were no difficulties with the technology and logistics before broadly promoting. After only 3 weeks the program is running very smoothly.  And despite only word-of-mouth promotion, 86 individuals have signed up over 100 transactions, well beyond what was expected at this point. The waiver process from the USDA is well-underway and we anticipate the West Village Market to come on board as the second market in the next few weeks.

This 2017 pilot is an exciting scaleable effort to develop a successful model in WNC in preparation for submitting a USDA Food Insecurity Nutrition Initiative (FINI) grant in 2018 to expand to more retail outlets in Buncombe and surrounding counties. Eventually this is expected to be a statewide initiative and conversations are underway with Durham and Wilmington.  Moving forward MountainWise, a non-profit serving the counties west of Buncombe, will be the lead agency in this effort as DUFB expands initially into Haywood County.  

The Ask for July:

We continue to need you to help us identify volunteers to serve as Double Up Liaisons.  These volunteers should be SNAP recipients and individuals who need 20 volunteer hours a week to maintain their SNAP eligibility.  Take a look at the Double Up Volunteer flyer,  print it off, and share it with individuals that might be a good fit for this opportunity.

We also welcome you to begin letting individuals know about the program and how they can participate. Click here to download a flyer to share.  The plan is to begin larger outreach efforts as soon as the West Village Market location launches. 

 For more information on the Double Up program, take a look at this article written by the Mountain Xpress!

Mountain Xpress Feature on DUFB!

March - Working Toward Efficiency, Effectiveness & Sustainability

The full Food Security Workgroup met on March 27th to share updates and further the work around shared strategies.  (Details are summarized on the meeting powerpoint).

Strategy Updates:

• The Education and Skill Building Team - Working off the Action Map created at the January Workgroup meeting, a team has been meeting to create parameters for the types of partners to include in a food security education and skill-building collaborative as well as begin the process of identifying a process and tool for capturing shared performance measures.  The tool was shared with a discussion on needed changes and suggestions to make it better meet our needs.

• Double Up Food Bucks - The Asheville Buncombe Food Policy Council received funding from the WNC Community Foundation to begin a pilot program in 2 Buncombe County retail markets with an anticipated launch date in late April.  A required USDA waiver has been applied for.  This process identified current software challenges that led Mother Earth Produce to decide to step back and wait for the DUFB expansion in the Fall rather than be an initial pilot retail organization. West Village Market is prepared to step in as the 2nd retail organization and waiver application has been submitted this this market.  (note, blanket waiver occurs with USDA FINI funding). A LOI has been submitted to Mission CI for expansion funds, if successful this will take us through Sept/Oct of next year, when Mountain Wise will be taking over as the lead agent. 
• Conversations are also taking place with Hopey.  There are several barriers such as no point of sale software system system. They also don’t carry as much local produce as they could and we are working with them to increase this…partnership beginning.
• Plans are moving forward to apply for USDA FINI funding with MountainWise as the lead.  The DUFB will still need to secure bridge funding through CFWNC grant in January of 2018, and some other funding source to supplement funds between October 2018 and when FINI funds become available in 2019.

Partner Updates:

• YMCA (Ella)  - The YMCA's clinical pilot with 5 participating clinics is beginning to see results.  Clinical partners are all Mission My Care Plus clinics (Leceister, Candler, Old Fort, Sweeten Creek and Asheville Pediatrics.  The YMCA provides food and and the mobile kitchen twice a month. Currently there have been 127 referrals to the nutrition program with 80-90% returns at each site. Feedback has been very positive and they hope to expand to 8 clinical sites. MANNA is a key partner in developing and implementing this model Note: Good location to provide info on DUFB
• MANNA (Amy) - MANNA is doing more work to integrate nutrition into the work of the 220+ MANNA using the Feeding America Nudge model ..nudging them to begin making healthier substitutes.  They are also partnering with COOP Extension to help support Nudge partners with food demonstrations and education.  Ultimately the goal is for a pantry to be able to do some nutrition education without having a professional onsite. There will be more attention around home canning (with clear understanding of risk and how to ensure safe practices).  MANNA is actively engaged with the YMCA's clinical pilot as well as working to support Bounty and Soul's community nutrition work.
• Bounty and Soul (Ali) - Bounty and Soul is piloting a clinical health coaching program in addition to their broader community nutrition and health education programming. They are halfway thru their first round of this pilot. They are beginning a partnership with MAHEC Family in Swannanoa with a goal to work with 16 people this year.  They are already seeing significant changes with some of the participants. Beyond coaching, the program includes regular exercise class opportunities, stress management and other support for a holistic approach.

Systems Change & Sustainability 

Our conversation to prioritize systems change approaches uncovered major concerns by all partners in the room about potential and significant changes to the funding landscape and a recognition that our systems change conversation should start with the core food security organizations that have been long-term active partners in this work. Along the lines of collaboration among our education and skill-building activities, there are many opportunities to collaborate for the purpose of increasing efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability.  Designing a food security collaboration that focuses on shared functions such as administrative support and volunteers as well as identifying long-term funding that minimizes competition and promotes sustainability with a stated goal to:

• Create a sustainable  structure to support our collective work with the core community partners doing food security work in Buncombe County.  

To further this work we will begin work to identify:

• Our shared values
• Barriers & supports
• Shared measures
• Funders & connectors

Identified Next Steps:

• Create shared a document to begin answering key questions --- schedule lunch meeting to identify questions, 
• Revisit and expand on initial conversations facilitated through Missions Community Investment initial work with food security organizations to identify what work is being done and who is part of “this system”
• Explore assistance to map/visualize “the system”
• Consider engaging media partners

February - Workgroup Meeting Structure, Momentum and Exciting News

Thanks to all who responded to our brief questionnaire on how to structure our meetings moving forward!  The results show that: Monday afternoons appear to work for almost of of you with late afternoon and eliminating the 3rd Monday make it work for a few more. Meeting bi-monthly and combining the larger group with time for subgroup work was preferred by a majority. A few of you expressed a willingness to participate on a small leadership team.  I'll reach out and set up a meeting over lunch or coffee in the next month to explore what that might look like. Our next meeting will be the 4th Monday of March (3/27) from 3-5 at MAHEC in the Pisgah Room of the Education Building.   Moving forward, through the first of the year our meetings will be from 3-5 on the following Mondays... May 22 - Buncombe County HHS, Hughes Building July 24 - MAHEC Blue Ridge A September 24th (no location) November 27 - MAHEC Cherokee January 22 - MAHEC Pisgah These dates and locations can be found on the CHIP Calendar Strategy Group Updates:

A small team (Cory Jackson w/YMCA, Kate Justen w/FEAST, Cathy Hohenstein with NC Cooperative Extension and Terri March) have met several times to begin work on what was considered the next step in our Skill Building and Education Collaborative.  The team has created a very simple definition for what type of program would be included in this collaborative as well as drafted some shared questions that these organizations could use with their clients/customers.   The Asheville Buncombe Food Policy Council with Bountiful Cities serving as the fiscal agent has been awarded funding by the Community Foundation of WNC for the Double Up Bucks initiative. The planning team, including numerous FS Workgroup members, has been meeting monthly to address logistics for the anticipated April roll out.  We are currently waiting to receive a required (and expected) waiver from the USDA to proceed.  Once that is obtained, the date for the program launch can be announced and we will begin sharing materials and information to get the word out to SNAP recipients as well as community agencies and organizations that can help spread the word.  The initial retail partners will be the French Broad Food Coop and Mother Earth Produce.  The planning team is already working identifying future retail partners and on securing funding for expansion leading up to a USDA grant application in 2018.

January - Action Planning for Skills-based Education Collaboration

The Food Security Workgroup met on January 13th.  The majority of the meeting focused on development of a draft action plan around our strategy to: Establish a community-wide approach to collaborating with and referring to existing skills-based education programs to address healthy eating and food security. 

After defining who our "customers" were for this strategy, we identified potential common performance metrics for the results we hope to see. We then drafted a map of action steps needed to impact these metrics.  As we move forward, we will need to modify, clarify and expand it, but it is a great start and something we can work with. Please take a few minutes to review the meeting notes and the draft action map. 

A small team will meeting in early February to create criteria for the type of education program that will be included in this collaborative. Additional next steps include meeting with identified potential partners and stakeholders for this strategy.  


Lastly, we need to identify what your preference is for the structure of these meetings moving forward.  I've created a very brief questionnaire to get you input.  I ask that you respond in the next few days so we can schedule our next meeting and keep the momentum going.

Click here for detailed meeting minutes, powerpoint (agenda, meeting structure and background info), and draft action plan or visit the links on the righthand toolbar. 

December: Education & Skills, Policy & Systems Change and Double Up Food Bucks Strategy Areas

Below is a summary of the Strategy Group work from our November Meeting.  If you are involved in the CHIP Food Security work, please review and identify where you would like to focus your energy.  The Double Up Food Bucks currently is the only group with solid action steps.  The other two have opportunity to help clarify and shape what will take place over the next few months.  

Our next meeting will take place in January.  Visit the meeting doodle to let me know what dates you are available.  After this next meeting we will evaluate how often we will be meeting and what is the preference for how we meet (as a whole group with "team" work or if groups wish to schedule separately. I know there is some crossover involvement.  

Strategy Area Work Summary

Action plan work to date prioritizes building on local successes related to 5 categories of intervention approaches.  Using current assets and that can be committed to this work, teams identified the follow strategies:

1. Establish a community-wide approach to collaborating with and referring to existing skills-based education programs to address healthy eating and food security.
2. Create a model for policy and environmental change to support food security.
3. Implement a Double Up Food Bucks program in local retail settings.

Subgroups identified key concepts, areas to explore and action steps for each of the 3 areas.

Education/Skills

Build on existing relationships with partner organizations to further educational opportunities.  Build the network between organizations.

Groups present: FEAST, YMCA, Mission CI

The YMCA and FEAST identified how this approach can work between their organizations

• YMCA nutrition programs talk to participants in their educational programs to see which of them have kids in FEAST partner schools.  Make connections between the nutrition education happening with the students @ FEAST and the parents @ The YMCA
• FEAST introduce the YMCA educators working with adults to school staff.  Teachers learn about wellness programs via the YMCA that are available to them as educators.  Parents learn about available programs that may be available to them.
• FEAST introduce YMCA educators to our partner school social worker as an option to connect to families in need.   
• Communication between FEAST classes and the mobile kitchen is ongoing, The mobile kitchen knows what FEAST students have been doing so they can reference it in their demonstrations and produce distribution.
• Find other services and avenues of communication between our organizations that can help to bring home the knowledge and skills they are learning with each of us
• Tailor education to coincide between programs to strengthen the message to both youth and adults. Allowing stronger educational take home points.
• YMCA Mobile Kitchen acts as a mobile education site that can fill education gaps on the service map.
• Bridge educational initiatives currently in place to strengthen the overall goal in nutrition education to reflect a decrease in the percentage of food insecurity and increase percentage fruit and vegetable consumption. These bridges act as strongholds and ensure a direct reflection of where education gaps truly exist.

Policy and Systems Change

Groups present: MANNA FoodBank, Youth Empowered Solutions, Mission Community Investment

Key Strengths/Resources:

• Expertise on best practice models
• Existing programs, trainings, etc. offered to the community
• Network of providers
• Connections with agencies across other sectors

Key Ideas:

• Align multiple funders in support of broader, multi-year projects
• Engage general public, key community leaders, and youth in addressing food insecurity
• Train youth as community leaders, and adults to work with youth
• Leverage existing networks to expand connectivity between programs and resources, and the people who need them

Strategies and Ideas:

1. Existing Program with Potential to Grow: Food Insecurity Screening and Referral Pilot project (MANNA) utilizes MANNA’s expertise in the client-choice pantry model, and connects to Mission’s network of providers, who are streamlining and unifying practice models that incorporate connections to community resources.
2. Growth Opportunity - Youth in the community are an untapped resource in creating access to food assistance with less stigma.
1. Youth Empowered Solutions has experience and expertise in engaging youth as community leaders and they can share training for adults working with youth
2. Mission has athletic trainers in many schools across the county through its Sports Medicine programs; this is a potential connection point between programming and students, who establish rapport with athletic trainers that they may not have with other adults. Opportunity to engage students who may be in need and connect with student ambassadors for food insecurity resources
3. MANNA has Packs for Kids partners in 16 counties, allowing early engagement of kids in youth leadership opportunities
4. MANNA and Youth Empowered Solutions can share advocacy training, possibly engage youth as advocates for their communities’ food security

3. Growth Opportunity – Community Alignment and Awareness
1. Engaging community funders to align with CHA priorities and direct more resources to critical work
2. Engage community members and leaders through Poverty Simulations, creating a deeper awareness and level of engagement for the general public and decision-makers
3. Connect with community groups (ex. churches within MANNA’s network) to support needs like transportation through their existing resources

Environmental Change

Establish a Double Up Bucks program in Buncombe County

Short term result: Pilot a Double Up Food Bucks Program in a small retail market in partnership with Mountain Wise as they pilot a site in a western county.  (Click here for a one-pager on DUFB)

Groups Present: ABFPB, Bountiful Cities, Buncombe HHS

• Identify second small retail location to participate in pilot. ( French Broad Food Coop is committed).
• Secure funding for pilot (conversations underway with Community Foundation)

Based on current resources action steps specific to CHIP process:

Develop a system for awareness and community support of DUFB and the role of retail access in addressing food security by:  

• Request for CHIP network to distribute the AB Food Policy Council Food Action Plan survey to networks and constituencies.  The will inform the work of the ABFPC going forward including the Double Up Food Bucks
• Present the DUFB program to the CHIP Advisory Council with request for input into Funding and identification of a lead agency as the program moves from pilot to broader implementation.
• Request formal endorsement of DUFB by CHIP
• Request that all CHIP partners share the DUFB program information and availability with their EBT/SNAP-using clients/contacts

November Update

Our current Population Health Community Indicators include  Fruit and Vegetable consumption (every 3 years) and Food Insecurity (annual).  http://app.resultsscorecard.com/Result/Embed/16806.  We will be attempting to identify more timely data and data that more accurately reflects Food Security (vs insecurity). Some of this frustration may be partially alleviated when we begin collecting performance measure on our strategies. 

Team members will research additional measures around food security, School Free and Reduced Lunch, and Snap Recipient caseload.

Update on Community Activity

o    Double-Up Food Bucks

Developed by Michigan’s Fair Food Network (FFN), DUFB  doubles the value of SNAP/EBT benefits spent at farmers markets and grocery stores.  Dollars earned ($1/ $1 spent) purchasing produce can be used to buy local fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables helping people bring home more healthy fruits and vegetables while supporting local farmers.  DUFB has demonstrated  increases in fruit & vegetable consumption, grocery story profit, and local growers benefit.  The USDA FINI grant has funded the SNAP benefit match with many of these.  The bulk of the funds needed to support DUFB is for the SNAP benefit dollar match.  A local match is required.

A FINI grant likely not feasible this year.  Not all pieces are  in place and biggest piece is who will "house" the grant.  The Asheville Buncombe Food Policy does not have the capacity to "house" the program and that is the biggest current need.  Mountain Wise is possibly interested in becoming a lead but not possible this year. 

ABFPC wants to focus on grocery stores which is where most local folks are likely to shop.  Mountain Wise is willing to help in 1 grocery store pilot in 2017. The French Broad Food Coop is very interested in being the pilot site this year.  This isn't ideal because it's not where most SNAP recipients are shopping but it is scalable for future years.  Also our coop uses the same system that all coops across the state and other Coop's (including Durham) are interested.  Mountain Wise will identify and pilot another store in west.  This is an opportunity to figure out system, work out the kinks and prepare for applying for FINI next year (and scale out regionally and to larger stores.  Food Lion is possibly interested).  Getting the word out to SNAP recipients will be a major part of the planning process.  We are working with the FFN on this.  They have created tool kits with lots of focus on marketing and education.  FFN has made one trip to Asheville to meet with partners and will continue to help advise us on the pilot and assist in applying for the FINI grant.

UNC Asheville and the NC Center for Health and Wellness will help with the evaluation components.

o    Healthy Corner Stores

Healthy Corner Stores are an evidenced-based approach to increase access to healthier foods in small retail settings such as convenience stores.  NC started this work in 2001 as a pilot in the far east NC as part of the Community Transformation Grants Initiative.  A major barrier to creating corner stores is support in knowing how to successful order, display, and keep foods fresh.  The funds to upgrade are particularly challenging.  CTG, YES! And others advocated for a Healthy Food Financing Policy to support upfront costs, however funds were not allocated.  YES presented to the general assemble and partial funds were allocated last year.  The are now working on getting the full allocation in the state budget

Locally, YES is working with a few stores.  Funds to make additional changes in this store are the major barrier for helping one corner store in Montford. 

A RFP is out for organizations who want to work with YES on creating Healthy Corner Stores.  The deadline is quick.  If you know folks or have folks who are interested in working with youth, please have them contact Diana.

This could also be a great opportunity to incorporate Double-Up Food Bucks in Corner Stores.

o    Mission Community Investment Awards

Seventeen agencies and 16 projects received Community Investment Awards, Several were collaborative project.  Buncombe County HHS and Feast as well and MANNA and the YMCA were funded.  The YMCA/MANNA project is for clinical referral with Mission Health Partners for the food insecure and using the YMCA mobile kitchen

The next funding will start earlier and Food Security will continue as a focus

Mission is also focusing internally on food security looking at how they are supporting employees and patients in a way that is equitable and accessible (Mission system-wide)

Revisiting and Clarifying Strategies 

       Action plan work to date prioritizes building on local successes related related to 5 categories of intervention approaches.  Using current assets and that can be committed to this work, teams are identifying strategies that 1) establish a community-wide approach to collaborating with and referring to existing skills-based education programs to address healthy eating and food security; 2) Implement a Double Up Food Bucks program in local retail settings; 3) Create a model for policy and environmental change to support food security.  

Next Steps

Summaries of each of this strategies will be developed and shared in December and expanded teams will be developed to being working on strategies.

November 10th Workgroup Meeting Agenda & Homework

Our next Food Security Workgroup will be held on November 10th, 9:30 - 12 at MAHEC in Blue Ridge B.  Please click here to RSVP.  Feel free to share this with others you think should be part of this process.  I will also be reaching out to individuals/organizations we discussed an an earlier session.

Our agenda for the meeting includes:

• A report on several local strategies that are in various stages of development
• A brief scorecard overview
• A work session on moving strategies forward

As I mentioned in an earlier email, please take a few minutes to visit the scorecard before our next meeting.  I would like your feedback on what is missing or needs to be changed. In particular, please look at the discussion of activities that are currently underway.  This was completed some time ago with much of it constructed by our summer intern with input from me.  I am confident information is missing and perhaps incorrect but this probably best comes from you.

The following link is to the main Buncombe County Scorecard that includes all of our priority work.  A brief video tutorial is provided to help you learn how to navigate the scorecard.  Scroll down the page and click on our Food Security Result where all our work to-date has been captured. Once redirected, to fully view all the content, click on the + by each of the community indicators (noted by a yellow C).  Under each indicator click on each of the oval buttons below labeled "Data Description", "Story Behind the Curve", "What Works", and "Action Plan".  My request above for special attention requires to the "What Works" section and the current work discussion.  Just email me your edits. Please remember that this is your scorecard and we want it to be correct!

If you have difficulty accessing it online or just prefer reading on paper, you can click here for a pdf version of our scorecard.

October: November Meeting

Since our work group last met in June, we have completed the first iteration of our Food Security scorecard 

as well as conducted research into data and strategies. Many of you participated in Mission's Community Investment grant process, developed some new working partners and are moving forward with new program plans.

It's time to reconvene and get concrete on exactly which strategies we collectively want to work on. Some type of communication strategy seems to be a given based on our work sessions. However, exactly what messages we want to communicate and for what audience still needs to be discussed. There are also some policy and built/social environmental strategies that are gaining traction that could possibly benefit from collective support.

I'm also beginning to have conversations with some of you about how your work and your performance measures can begin to be reflected on the scorecard. And that seems to be a conversations that needs to be had with the whole working group especially as we talking about how to align our work around some common strategies. If 10 workgroup members are interested we can schedule our own training with WNC Healthy Impact on how to use RBA. Let me know if you are interested and we will talk more at our November meeting.

I've identified 3 potential meeting times and ask that you visit this doodle poll and select which of these you are available for.  Between now and our meeting, I also ask that you visit the scorecard and provide feedback on what is missing or needs to be changed. The following link is to the main Buncombe County Scorecard that includes all of our priority work. A brief video tutorial is provided to help you learn how to navigate the scorecard. Scroll down the page to find our Food Security Result where all our work to-date has been captured. If you have difficulty accessing it online or just prefer reading on paper, you can click here for a pdf version of our specific scorecard.The scorecard also includes information on some best practices that you could possible use here. And in particular (if you don't have enough to read), I very much encourage you read the Appalachian Foodshed Project report about Community Food security in WNC.

September Update

This workgroup met on June 7th, clarifying results and indicators that will guide their work and develop more specificity and focus around strategies to pursue. July work focused on updated the scorecard and continuing to work on data.  

An additional strategy has been added to support the work initiated by the Asheville Buncombe Food Policy Council (ABFPC) to explore and potentially bring a program to Buncombe County that would provide "Double Buck" incentives to SNAP participants to increase fruit and vegetable consumption.  ABFPC,  with participation of CHIP workgroup members hosted a 3-day planning and consultation visit with a representative of the Michigan's Fair Food Network.