Tools for Advocates

What is the geographic scope of your effort? 
Are you targeting change for the state, a city, or a municipality? The geographic parameters of your effort will shape the types of policy strategies, models, and solutions possible. Check out our state-by-state breakdown of HFFI policy efforts and programs, or visit our Business Models page to see the various types of healthy food projects that could be most appropriate for your community, the specific needs and challenges to supporting that model, and what policy strategies can help support these businesses.

• Visit County Office, a searchable database to find accurate, up-to-date information about all government offices and public records sources in your local area.
• The Food Trust’s HFFI Impacts: The Nationwide Success of Healthy Food Financing Initiatives report describes the emergence and impact of local, regional, state, and federal healthy food financing policy efforts across the country.

Who are the key decision makers you’re trying to influence?

Understanding who the key decision makers are in your areas and how to connect with them is a key strategy for any policy advocacy campaign. Researching and understanding their interest areas and how to frame your issue to engage them appropriately and early on will help your campaign be successful.

• The Food Trust’s Healthy Food Financing Handbook describes how to work with local partners to initiate policy efforts.
• Voices for Healthy Kids’ Online Advocacy Toolkit aims to support local and state groups in developing advocacy campaigns, specifically to plan, develop, and launch a local or state healthy food financing program.

What is the timeline for your effort? 
Moving policy efforts forward — from start to adoption to implementation — takes time and sustained energy. Depending on the degree and level of change you are trying to achieve, each process has a different timeline, requirements, formats, and other milestones along the way. Local policies may require shorter time periods, while state and federal processes follow longer legislative and budgetary timelines. For all processes, however, stakeholder and community engagement should be a critical part of the process and should be planned and accounted for. These pre-development efforts ensure that policy efforts are driven by those most impacted by the issue, are timely and responsive to the needs of a community, and have buy-in from important stakeholders who can be mobilized in the future.

Have you conducted a power mapping or SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats) analysis? 
These analyses are important for better understanding the policy and decision-making landscape of your community and target of your policy and advocacy efforts. They can help create more strategic and targeted plans of action, with clarity around who is the decision maker or decision-making body that can most influence this issue, as well as who are potential allies, supporters, and opponents.

What will success look like? What are your indicators for success? 
Identifying key goals and deliverables at each stage of the process are important tools to monitor progress and allow you to make adjustments and refinements as needed, ensuring each activity is contributing to the larger goal. For example, your first goal for the pre-development stage might be identifying and engaging key stakeholders in your region—this represents a first step toward the final goal of advancing an equitable food policy change at the county level.

• Go to Metrics for Healthy Communities to explore tools and a template logic model to help plan and evaluate community health efforts, including healthy food access.

Are there data to support your effort? Who are the groups or constituencies most impacted by the issue? 
Data, along with framing and diverse stakeholder engagement (described below), are critical in making the case for your policy effort. Start by identifying the need in your region; reaching out to partners in the academic and research communities can help facilitate this data collection and presentation. Public and proprietary health data and supermarket and demographic data can also be collected or purchased from a variety of sources. Data tools and mapping can be used to help understand the key health, economic, geographic, and demographic dimensions of your local food system environment, and also to help make the case that your issue is important. These tools help to identify the key groups or constituencies—by race/ethnicity, income, gender, neighborhood, or other characteristics—who face the largest disparities in access, opportunity, optimal health, economic, and social outcomes. This information is critical to advancing equitable policy strategies, allowing for more targeted policies and approaches that can positively impact the communities facing the greatest need.

• Read the Food For Every Child mapping reports, such as this one focused on Alabama, for an overview of how to highlight need in a way that captures the attention of policymakers.
• Go to the USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas, which maps a number of food access indicators by census track.
• Check out PolicyMap for an easy-to-use online mapping tool with data on demographics, income, education and more

What is your messaging strategy? 
Maps, data, and storytelling are most effective when they are used to build a clear and compelling story about the local food environment and the impact of successful efforts on communities. Communications strategies can bolster support for your work and raise awareness in the media and government communities. Consider the overarching narratives or stories you would like to convey, work with partners to gather these stories, and also consider the perspectives that may be needed to connect the issue to diverse audiences. Also consider key decision makers you are targeting for your campaign.

Have you identified key stakeholders and community leaders? Are the groups most impacted by the issue at the table?

Critical to success is an inclusive, participatory, community engagement process. Engaging key stakeholders from diverse sectors across the food system ensures that policies are responsive to and reflective of context, are shaped by a robust participation from all relevant sectors, and offer a powerful signal to policymakers about the importance of this issue to their constituents. Stakeholders and members of task forces may include food access organization representatives, industry leaders, government and policy leaders, financial sector representatives, community development leaders, public health leaders, children’s advocates, community organizers and leaders, local residents, farmers, food entrepreneurs or businesses, workers across the supply chain, and more.

Food is a powerful issue that affects all of our lives, and each of us has an important voice to share. Understanding where our food comes from, who has access to it, who is part of the system (from growing, harvesting, and distributing, to selling, eating, and disposing) and who makes decisions around food can serve as an important rallying point to bring people together to find solutions. All of us can get involved with the issues of food access and economic opportunity in our local communities, states, and even on the federal level. Below are some ways you can get involved today.

• Talk about the issue. Have conversations with your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, grocery store workers, and others to hear what people are experiencing. Visit Why HFFI to learn more about the topic, challenges and opportunities, and why it matters to your community.
• Get plugged in. Read about what’s happening in other cities, or attend a nearby event in your neighborhood or region. Visit Civil Eats to read timely commentary on the food system.
• Learn how different communities are responding to the issue. Check out the HFFI Efforts by State section to learn what communities across the country are doing to improve food access, create jobs, and link producers to consumers and markets. Read about the various Business Models that can serve as potential solutions.
• Connect with your local Food Policy Council. Across the country, local communities are establishing food policy councils (FPCs) or other bodies, such as a local task force or committee, to create a space for diverse representatives and stakeholders from across a local or regional food system to come together and identify and prioritize needs, identify policy solutions, and coordinate and implement action. If your city does not yet have a local food policy council, consider reaching out to others who might be interested in starting one.
• Reach out to local community institutions that could serve as important partners in improving food access and addressing food system challenges. These institutions could include local churches, food banks, schools, neighborhood centers, school-based health centers, or hospitals and clinics. Learn about efforts they are working on and who they are working with—such as supporting urban community gardens, food-related workforce development programs, youth training or development, nutrition education or awareness campaigns, and more—so you can get involved or share your ideas.
• Support local food or healthy food retail businesses. Find out which local businesses promote healthy food and equitable business practices, such as those that sell fresh and affordable healthy food, are locally owned or operated, source or distribute food locally, offer their workers livable wages, incorporate sustainability practices, and employ local residents or individuals with barriers to employment. Shop at your local farmers market, find the nearest cooperative grocery store, or shop at mission-driven nonprofit enterprises or businesses.
• Find out who your local representatives are and let them know why this issue is important to you. Visit the USA.gov website to contact your local, state, or federal elected officials. Search your city, county, school district or state government website to find out who represents you, such as your mayor, city council member, county supervisor, and/or school board member.
• Share your ideas and perspectives. Consider writing an op-ed or letter to the editor to submit to your local newspaper, using these writing tips from the National League of Cities. You can also write a blog post or share information about important policy issues, articles, or success stories through your social media account.
• Learn about important issues affecting the food system. Learn about additional topics and issue areas that are critical components to our local, regional, and national food system. Learn about and connect with organizations actively involved in issue areas impacting the food system, including hunger, nutrition, school food, sustainable agriculture, labor, water, land conservation, food banks, food recovery, and food safety.

Across the country, local communities are establishing food policy councils (FPCs) or other bodies, such as a local task force or committee, to create a space for diverse representatives and stakeholders from across a local or regional food system to come together and identify and prioritize needs, identify policy solutions, and coordinate and implement action. If your city does not yet have a local food policy council, consider reaching out to others who might be interested in starting one.

About Food Policy Councils

Food policy councils often include representatives from the key sectors of a food system—production, processing, distribution, retail and consumption, and recovery/disposal—as well as advocates, organizations, local residents, workers, and others who are interested in aligning policy efforts. FPCs are often initiated through a government or public process, such as a resolution, executive order, or act, and thus are often connected to the local, city, regional, or state jurisdiction. FPCs play an important role of educating and offering recommendations to policymakers.

The John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future has developed a Food Policy Networks project with helpful resources to learn about your FPC and others from across the country.