Healthy Food Financing Initiative and the Food Environment Atlas

The Obama Administration recently announced the details of its $400 million multi-year Healthy Food Financing Initiative, which will expand access to nutritious foods for underserved urban and rural communities in the US (see the press release from the US Department of the Treasury). To identify communities which currently lack healthy food options, the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service launched a great online research tool called the Food Environment Atlas. This tool allows you to compile county-level statistics on three categories of food environment factors:

1. Food choices (e.g., lbs per capita prepared meals, lbs per capita solid fats, lbs per capita fruits and vegetables)

2. Health and well-being (e.g., adult diabetes rate, adult obesity rate)

3. Community characteristics (e.g., child poverty rate, poverty rate, median household income).