The Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center is proud to announce the launch of our Hyperlocal Health project, a public health awareness campaign to connect New York City residents in need of food assistance with resources and services already available in their communities. The project is initially rolling out in East Harlem as a campaign called Food For East Harlem.
There is not enough available information about healthy food resources in NYC, especially in underserved communities. The Center’s Neighborhood Food Resource Guides are one tool residents can use to find food resources that are close to home, but there are still populations the Guides do not reach. Hyperlocal Health attempts to bridge that gap through a multimedia awareness campaign that leverages the information already available in the Guides. For the first leg of the project, we are targeting the community of East Harlem using the East Harlem Guide (which is available in Spanish and Chinese as well as English).
The Center has developed flyers, posters, and social media posts that inform East Harlem residents about food resources in their community. This includes listing out East Harlem’s food pantries, debunking myths about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), encouraging people to shop at East Harlem’s farmers’ markets, and much more.
In order to facilitate dissemination of these materials, we have partnered with community-based organizations and elected officials in East Harlem, including Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service, Wellfare, GrowNYC, Assemblymember Eddie Gibbs, and City Council Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala.
A huge thank you to the partners for their collaboration on this!
