Develop a Compelling Story

Develop a Compelling Story

Develop a Compelling Story

Maps and data are most effective when they are used to build a clear and compelling story about
the local food environment. However, it is also important that your story has a human component.
Integrating the needs of community members is key to ensuring your effort has powerful talking
points that describe your maps and the problems they depict.
Phase 2: Engage and Empower Stakeholders
To achieve policy change, it is useful to align yourself with other organizations and individuals with
similar goals. The “Engage and Empower Stakeholders” phase involves connecting a diverse set of
stakeholders, including supermarket industry executives, public health and economic development
officials, children’s advocates, community leaders and civic sector leaders, in order to build
consensus about how to improve health and revitalize communities.
Successfully establishing policies to encourage supermarket development requires the leadership,
knowledge and support of high-level leaders from the public, private and civic sectors. Convening
a task force to address the grocery gap can move these stakeholders to identify public policy
solutions. Such a task force is a useful way to engage leaders in different sectors that do not
typically interact.

The Importance of Multi-Sector Pa rtnerships

Convening a multi-sector task force to examine the barriers to supermarket development in
underserved communities is one strategy that has successfully generated policy change in
Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, New Jersey and Louisiana. The participation of leaders from these

key groups is central to this process:

Food Access Advocates

Nonprofit organizations working to improve access to healthy food, also known as food access
organizations, have convened state and local task forces focused on the issue of improving access
to healthy food retail. These organizations can help ensure that policy recommendations developed
by the task force remain on track to impact specified areas of need.

Supermarket Industry Leaders

The participation of supermarket industry leaders is central to the success of this process. Food
retailing associations, which advocate on behalf of their members for regulatory and legislative
matters, have played key roles convening and leading state and city task forces. For example,
representatives from the Food Industry Alliance of New York, the Louisiana Retailers Association,
the Illinois Food Retail Association and Illinois Retail Merchants Association played a critical role in
the advocacy process in their respective states and helped navigate the local political environment.
In addition, including a diverse group of representatives from the grocery industry—both chain
and independent retailers as well as wholesalers—brings essential perspectives to the task force.

Government Leaders

Government leaders can play a critical role in efforts to improve food access. For example, in New
York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council President Christine Quinn were committed
to addressing the problem of food access, and the city’s Food Policy Coordinator engaged local
leaders and co-convened the task force. Leadership from city and state agencies working in public
health, economic development and planning are valuable voices at the table. Although educating