Food Systems Toolkit
A healthy, sustainable food system emphasizes, strengthens, and makes visible the interdependent relationships between individual sectors (from production to waste disposal) and characteristics (health-promoting, sustainable, resilient, diverse, fair, economically balanced, and transparent) of the system.
Plan4Health coalitions approach food systems by identifying the many inputs and outputs that impact a community’s access to healthy food. Do schools serve nutritious lunches to their students? Do neighborhoods have access to corner stores, grocery stores, farmers markets, and gardens that supply a range of food at affordable prices? Plan4Health coalitions have worked in many different ways to improve the policy, governing systems, and environments that impact these aspects of communities in their effort to make healthy communities where people live, learn, work and play.