Cultivating Public Health:Planning Interventions in the Food System

Cultivating Public Health:

Planning Interventions in the Food System

Alfonso Morales, PhD

Associate Professor

Urban and Regional Planning

The University of Wisconsin – Madison

What is Planning?

• Planning – – Placemaking and Public Participation,

how?

• Largely through…– plan making and plan implementation

• Plan Making…– Various kinds, strategic, scenario,

visioning, with various purposes, housing, transportation, food…

Lugo Spain,Scenario Planning for Food

Scenario Drivers and Scenarios

Diminishing economic crisis

Deepening economic crisis

Growing awareness for local food

Green Paradise YES WE CAN

Diminishing awareness for local food

LARGE scale LUGO Disaster, Disaster

Plan Implementation

• Besides plan making planners assist with plan implementation– Freeport IL,

• Professional planners staff government agencies and work in the private sector…

• The history of planning is roughly congruent with public health…

Historical Congruencies

• Both disciplines… – Benefitted from/were driven by

journalism…– Have separated or integrated people and

uses…– Practiced nascent assessment, with

subsequent policies and procedures

• TB / Offices of Public Health• Zoning / Offices of Community

Development

Normative Similarities

• Roughly similar ameliorative impulses seeking to – assure the public and – provide policy prescriptions.

• Legitimating that which leads to improved public welfare has been a challenge…– So historically for instance,

marketplaces

Contemporary Concerns

• Applied research providing for– Assessment,– Assurance and – Policy

Applied Research:An Integrative Framework

Trends and Context in the Food System

EconomicHistoricalDemographicPoliticalLand Uses andConditions

Scale-specific Food System Regulations

HealthProductionProcessingDistributionWaste & Energy

Outcomes, Feedback, SuggestionsEconomicHealthSocialPolitical/legal

Food Security Framework

www.community-food.org

Relating Values to Practice

Assurance and Policy Development:Researching Marketplaces & Vendors

Marketplaces and Food Access

• Technological and Organizational Barriers to adopting SNAP at markets

• Important innovations in marketplaces, integrating cooking demonstrations, double bucks programs, buy local and etc.

Capacitating People

Morales, Alfonso. 2009. “A Social Currency Approach to Improving the Health Related Quality of Life for Migrant Workers.” Journal of Southern Rural Sociology. 24(1): 92-112.

Outcome: Migrant workers can organize to self-produce important health-related benefits.

Policy Experimentation

Freeport IL – Pretzel City USA

• Over 10 years the planning firm Vandewalle and Associates has worked with Freeport IL– Brownfields remediation– Adaptive reuse for remediated buildings

and places– In 2008 a health assessment of the Third

Ward, produced new community organization

– New partnership with UW - URPL

The End

Morales Health-Related ResearchJOURNAL ARTICLES (* INDICATES PEER REVIEW)*Pfantz, Megan and Alfonso Morales. 2013. Increasing the Healthiness of Consumers Through Farmers Markets. Journal of Extension. Accepted, vol/pages TBD.*Huerta, Alvaro and Alfonso Morales. 2013. “Defying the Odds: Latino Gardeners Organizing for Justice.” Aztlan: A Journal of Chicana/o Studies. vol/pages TBD.*Pfantz, Megan and Alfonso Morales. 2013. Starting a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Information for Integrating SNAP/EBT Benefits into Farmers Markets. Journal of Extension. Accepted, vol/pages TBD.*Day Farnsworth, Lindsay and Alfonso Morales. 2011. Scaling up for Regional Food Distribution. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development. 2(1): 1-21.*Morales, Alfonso. 2011. “Public Markets: Prospects for Social, Economic, and Political Development.” Journal of Planning Literature. 26(3): 3-17.*Morales, Alfonso. 2010. “Planning and the Self-Organization of Marketplaces.” Journal of Planning Education and Research. 30(2): 182-197.*Morales, Alfonso and Gregg Kettles. 2009. “Healthy Food Outside: Farmers’ Markets, Taco Trucks, and Sidewalk Fruit Vendors.” Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy. 26(1): 20-48.*Grant, Don, Alfonso Morales and Jeff Sallaz. 2009. “Pathways to Meaning: A New Approach to Studying Emotions at Work.” American Journal of Sociology. 115(2): 327-364.*Morales, Alfonso. 2009. “Public Markets as Community Development Tools.” Journal of Planning Education and Research. 28(4): 426-440.*Morales, Alfonso. 2009. “A Social Currency Approach to Improving the Health Related Quality of Life for Migrant Workers.” Journal of Southern Rural Sociology. 24(1): 92-112.*Fernandez, Leticia and Alfonso Morales. 2007. “Language and Use of Cancer Screening Services among Border and Non-Border Hispanic Texas Women.” Ethnicity and Health. 12(3): 245-63.*Morales, Alfonso. 2000. “Peddling Policy: Street Vending in Historical and Contemporary Context.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy. 20(3/4): 76-99. *Morales, Alfonso, Steve Balkin and Joe Persky. 1995. "The Value of Benefits of a Public Street Market: The Case of Maxwell Street." Economic Development Quarterly. 9(4): 304-320. Debate in this journal over this paper:Rhonda Halperin, “The Use of Economic Anthropology in Economic Development.” Economic Development Quarterly. 9(4): 321-322.Wim Wiewel, “The Use of Economic Analysis in Public Policy.” Economic Development Quarterly. 9(4): 324-326.Morales, Alfonso, Steve Balkin and Joe Persky. 1995. “Contradictions and Irony in Policy Research on the Informal Economy: A Reply.” Economic Development Quarterly. 9(4): 327-330. BOOK CHAPTERSMorales, Alfonso. 2011. “Growing Food AND Justice: Dismantling Racism through Sustainable Food Systems.” Chapter 7 in Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class and Sustainability. Allison Alkon and Julian Agyeman, (editors). Cambridge: MIT University Press. Morales, Alfonso, Marco Delgado and Elizabeth Carson. 2003. “Succeeding by Six: The Training Parents are Requesting for Supporting their Children in South and South Central El Paso.” In Digame: Policy and Politics in the Texas Border. Dennis Soden, Christine Brenner, and Irasema Coronado, (editors). Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing, (pp 241-258).BOOK REVIEWSMorales, Alfonso. 2011. Review of Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in an Era of Oil Scarcity by Julia Wright. London: Earthscan. Journal of Planning Education and Research. 30(2): 215-17.Morales, Alfonso. 2007. Review of The Modern Art of Dying: A History of Euthanasia in the United States. By Shai J. Lavi. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Law and Society Review. 41(2): 498-500.Morales, Alfonso. 1994. Review essay titled: "Household Provisioning and Rationalization Processes." Review of two books, Beyond Regulation: The Informal Economy in Latin America. Victor E. Tokman (editor). Boulder, CO: Rienner and Creating and Transforming Households. Joan Smith and Immanuel Wallerstein, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Contemporary Sociology. 23(4): 553-55. MINOR PUBLICATIONS (EDITED JOURNALS, WORKING PAPERS, POLICY REPORTS, ETC.)Morales, Alfonso and Mukherji Nina, 2010. “Zoning for Urban Agriculture.” Zoning Practice. 26(3): 1-8.Morales, Alfonso, and Gregg Kettles. 2009. “Zoning for Public Markets and Street Vendors.” Zoning Practice. 25(2): 1-8.