Food Deserts

For my policy paper I am collaborating with Annie and a member of the Urban planning center, David. We are looking at food deserts and how they impact health in individuals. Our focus is going to be on Detroit specificially, while we will make connections to programs and cities in similar situations nationally and internationally as well.
My portion of the paper is going to focus on existing programs, mobile markets and food banks and looking at how we can make improvements in them to better individuals' health. Right now the programs that I have looked into focus on education and accessibility to fresh foods. There has been a recent program instituted called USHealthier schools, which focuses on training and tech assistance for healthy school meals, nutrition education, school and community support. In Michigan one school has met the standards so far and I think if we can increase the amount of schools involved-especially in areas with food deserts, it will better the understanding of people (especially children) of the importance of fresh foods. This is the link for the site: http://www.fns.usda.gov
Another program is Project FRESH, which allows women participating the WIC program and qualifying seniors to get booklets with coupons in them that can be used at farmer's markets. This is important because with more funding for the program and education about it, there will be increased availability of fresh foods for individuals most at risk. A big problem is that though many farmer's markets accept Project FRESH coupons, many people that would be eligible are not aware of the program. Project FRESH : http://www.projectfresh.msu.edu
I am also going to look into mobile markets and their success in the past and how food banks (Gleaner's in Detroit especially) have affected the accessibility to fresh produce.