Healthy food financing initiatives are a relatively new approach to improve access to healthy foods, enabling healthy food retailers to locate or renovate food outlets in underserved communities through one-time financing assistance. This paper provides guidance on using meaningful, measurable, and manageable methods to evaluate healthy food financing efforts. The authors outline a number of resources and approaches to quantify short- and long-term program effectiveness by capitalizing on existing data sources, maximizing application and reporting processes, and conducting longer-term multilevel studies.
Published: November 2013
ID #: 1073
Journal: J Public Health Manag Pract
Authors: Fleischhacker SE, Flournoy R, Moore LV
Keywords: Community setting, Food insecurity, Food outlet, Grocery store, Healthy food financing, Supermarket
Focus Area: Food Access
Resource Type: Journal Article
Related Research
November 2025
The implications of banning synthetic food dyes on the food purchase quality of families with children
This study examines how removing synthetic dyes from the food supply impacts the nutritional quality of grocery purchases among families with children, focusing on the 7 dyes targeted by FDA for phase-out by the end of 2026 (some of which are required (i.e., red dye #3), while the removal of others are voluntary). Aim 1 MoreNovember 2025
Measuring the impact of charitable food program cuts on the nutritional quality of foods
This study examines how sudden cuts to USDA programs supporting the charitable food system (i.e., The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement (LFPA)) affect the supply of healthy food available for distribution by food banks. Existing data from 15 food banks will be analyzed, and additional data will MoreSeptember 2025