Nutrition, Wellness and Development

Well, it’s the last day of National Nutrition Month.  What, you didn’t know it was National Nutrition Month?  Apparently, you don’t read my blog on a regular basis!  I thought I’d put up one more post on the topic of nutrition.  While the goal of a healthy diet is to improve our health, nutrition can also be part of an economic and community development plan, especially in rural communities. 

The USDA will award grants through their Farmers Market Promotion Program to expand “direct producer-to-consumer market opportunities.”  Eligible projects include expanding or starting a farmer’s market, community supported agriculture programs or agritourism.  Here’s an example where economic development and wellness programming can be combined.  Applications are due April 15.  Unlike many federal grant programs, they will accept proposals for relatively small projects; the award floor is only $2,500.

The USDA Economic Research Service has developed a Food Environment Atlas.  This interactive tool allows you to identify, on a county level, access to food and other nutritional/health indicators.  You can create maps that illustrate food prices, distance to grocery stores, direct farm sales and obesity levels, among many other characteristics.  You can also retrieve the data on a county basis.  This is a good resource if you’re applying for any type of wellness grant, to illustrate need.

USDA Rural Development has also launched a campaign, Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, that brings many funding opportunities and other resources under one umbrella.   The webpage has information on programs that can “support local farmers, strengthen rural communities, promote healthy eating and protect natural resources.”  There’s a lot of information here.

The Coca Cola Foundation awards grants in several categories, including Healthy and Active Lifestyles.  They’ll consider programs that “support access to exercise, physical activity and nutritional education programs, programs that motivate behavior modification, and programs that encourage lifestyle/behavioral changes.”  I don’t see any deadlines, so they probably accept applications on an ongoing basis.

The Sara Lee Foundation will fund programs that address food insecurity, nutrition and healthy lifestyles.  Examples of eligible projects include those that focus on food recovery, increased access to fresh produce, meal programs when schools are not in session, nutrition education and increasing physical activity.  They give priority to proposals from communities where they have an office or facility.  No deadline.

Here are some ideas for a wellness program in your community: a study released last month found three simple household routines can lead to a 40% reduction in the risk of childhood obesity—eating dinner as a family six or seven times a week, limiting the time the child watches TV to less than two hours a day, and making sure he or she gets more than 10.5 hours of sleep a night.

March 31, 2010  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: Grant Advice, Reports and Studies, Training and Tools

One Response

  1. Rural Health & Community Development » Cancer Control and Prevention - April 15, 2010

    [...] and other physical activity-promoting projects is the Coca Cola Foundation, as I mentioned in a post a couple weeks ago.  Again, no [...]

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