One in seven Chicagoans lacks easy access to healthy food
Mari Gallagher Research & Consulting Group today released the 2011 Chicago Food Desert Drilldown, which provides new analysis and maps of current Food Desert conditions.
While the Food Desert has declined nearly 40 percent over the past five years since the firm’s original 2006 landmark study, serious health and retail challenges persist, Gallagher said. The Drilldown provides details including:
- Nearly 384,000 Chicagoans live in food deserts.
- 70 percent are African American.
- More than 124,000 are children.
- Nearly 70,000 households are headed by single women with children.
- 40,000 households do not own cars.
Based on the Drilldown, Gallagher said the target date to eliminate the Chicago Food Desert completely should be 2015, as more and more grocers have announced plans to enter the Food Desert and strategic data can identify the highest impact sites. The firm will repeat the analysis every six months beginning in early 2012 until this is accomplished.
Gallagher also stressed that over $880 million from the USDA Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP – formerly known as Food Stamps), flowed through Chicago in 2010, and that many of the Food Desert SNAP stores are “fringe” meaning that they sell very little if any healthful food.
“SNAP is a vital program, but we need to both enforce and raise the standards,” Gallagher said. “Especially at a time when budgets are being slashed everywhere, we must ensure that SNAP promotes good food, public health, and is an economic development engine.”
Gallagher’s original Chicago report found statistically significant relationships between Food Desert conditions and more premature diet-related death after controlling for other key factors. That report motivated Congressman Bobby Rush to enter Food Desert language into the Farm Bill and helped popularize the term Food Desert nationally.
Visit www.marigallagher.com/projects to download the report.
Mari Gallagher Research and Consulting Group has enjoyed a national reputation for diverse, high impact projects across the United States. Our expertise includes quantitative and qualitative research projects; financial services, housing, community development, community planning, workforce issues, the economy, immigration, and community health; commercial site assessments and hands-on redevelopment consulting; business strategies; mapping; and facilitation and public forums.
Coalition pushes for broadband expansion in Illinois
Citing broadband’s ability to spur economic growth and improve the quality of living among many communities, a diverse group of Illinois organizations and leaders have formed a coalition to promote making broadband available throughout the state.
“Broadband drives everything from our economy to educational opportunity, helping businesses connect to new markets and students connect to education anywhere in the world. Those opportunities should be available to every family and business in the state, no matter where they are located,” said Larry Ivory, co-chair of Internet Innovation Alliance Illinois.
Meet me in Urbana
This Saturday, I’ll be talking PR, web & communications strategy at Illinois Democratic Women’s “Political Campaign College” in Urbana. Although probably not as thrilling as the Illini thumping the Boilermakers, it should be a fun discussion nonetheless. Contact IDW to reserve your seat at the discussion.
IDW Campaign Training Flier Champaign
From Barracks to Battlefield
Pew Charitable Trusts this week released “From Barracks to Battlefield,” a report that finds that U.S. Department of Defense clean energy investments increased 300 percent between 2006 and 2009, from $400 million to $1.2 billion, and are projected to eclipse $10 billion annually by 2030.
Press release and more information here. And as you can see, video below.
Green Scissors report released in Chicago
To download the report click here: http://greenscissors.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Green_Scissors_2011.pdf. National press release is below the video. Learn more at http://greenscissors.com/.
“Green Scissors” shows path to cut $380 billion from federal budget
“GREEN SCISSORS” REPORT TO SHOW EASY PATH TO CUT
$380 BILLION FROM FEDERAL BUDGET
Left-right coalition identifies fast, easy, effective savings
via cuts to wasteful, environmentally harmful subsidies
“Green Scissors” brings together an unlikely alliance of conservative, taxpayer, consumer and environmental groups united behind one message: The place to start trimming government spending is where Congress is subsidizing environmental harm.
WHAT:
Press conference to announce the release of “Green Scissors 2011: Cutting Wasteful and Environmentally Harmful Spending.” Report details how Congress can cut $380 billion from the federal budget simply by cutting unneeded subsidies that actually harm the environment.
WHEN:
Wednesday, August 24, 11:00 a.m.
WHERE:
Hotel Monaco
225 N. Wabash Avenue
Chicago, IL 60601
WHO:
- Ryan Alexander, Executive Director, Taxpayers for Common Sense
- Eli Lehrer, Vice President, Heartland Institute
- Representatives from local free-market and environmental organizations
Green Scissors 2011 is being released by four organizations: progressive environmental group Friends of the Earth, deficit hawk Taxpayers for Common Sense, consumer watchdog Public Citizen, and free-market think tank The Heartland Institute.
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Tom Geoghegan and LWV challenge the remap
A second legal challenge has been filed to new congressional and General Assembly maps passed by the Legislature, this one contending that the new districts violate free-speech rights.
Tom Geoghegan, attorney for the league, said this is the first time to his knowledge that a remap has been challenged strictly on First Amendment reasons. But the action is consistent with recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions banning limits on donations by corporations and wealthy candidates as an affront to First Amendment guarantees, he said.
16,000 Illinoisans call on U.S. EPA to Cut Toxic Mercury Pollution
Chicago, IL – Over 16,000 Illinoisans have urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to formally adopt its proposed Mercury & Air Toxics Rule to cut health-harming pollution from coal-fired power plants. With today marking the end of EPA’s comment period on the rule, over 90 concerned citizens and health experts gathered outside of EPA Region 5 headquarters to call on the agency to adopt the strongest possible rule to protect public health.
All-told, over 800,000 Americans have submitted public comment in support of the rule—more than any other rule in the agency’s history.
“The tremendous public response to this rule makes clear that Americans recognize the urgent need to reduce mercury, arsenic and other dangerous pollutants in the air we breathe,” said Susan Hedman, EPA Regional Administrator. “EPA’s new standards will prevent thousands of premature deaths and cases of asthma and other illnesses — and they will level the playing field for power plants already using widely available clean technologies.”
The rule will reduce mercury pollution from power plants nationwide by 91 percent, reduce arsenic and acid gases by 91 percent, prevent 12,200 trips to the hospital, and save up to 17,000 lives each year once it is implemented, according to EPA projections.
“This rule is crucial for protecting public health,” said Dr. Susan Buchanan, an Assistant Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “It will save billions of dollars in health costs and mean healthier, longer lives for hundreds of thousands of Americans.”
“Destructive emissions from huge coal power plants have been poisoning the air we breathe for far too long,” said Brian Urbaszewski, environmental health director for Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago. “With asthma rates still increasing across the country, this EPA rule and the huge cuts in acid gas pollution it requires will allow parents of children with asthma to breathe a little easier.”
Power plants are the source of more than half of the nation’s mercury and acid gases and release about 25 percent of air toxics pollution in the United States, according to U.S. EPA.
Municipal and medical waste incinerators used to emit nearly as much mercury as power plants. Under the Clean Air Amendments of 1990, those two sources installed pollution controls to cut their mercury pollution by 96 and 98 percent, respectively. Power plants remain the only major source of toxic air pollution that pollute without limit.
“Congress is trying to delay the mercury and air toxics rule for at least two years – and possibly more,” said Steve Frenkel, Midwest Director of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Blocking this clean air standard by even one year means more death, disease, and increased healthcare costs for American families and taxpayers. It’s time to clean-up smog, soot, and toxic air pollution from power plants now,” Frenkel said.
“Powering our homes should not poison our kids,” said Catie Krasner, field organizer with Environment Illinois. “Power plants have successfully resisted modern pollution controls for two-decades; it’s well-past time they cleaned up their act.”
The agency will now consider the public comment it has received and is expected to finalize new mercury rules by mid-November.
Clean air rules adopted under the federal Clean Air Act have a positive economic benefit. For just this rule alone, U.S.EPA estimates the value of the air quality improvements for human health could reach up to $140 billion annually while only costing $10.9 billion, yielding a return on investment of more than 13-to-1.
Nationally, more than 200 public health, faith, and environmental organizations expressed support for this rule. Illinois organizations participating in today’s event included: the Union of Concerned Scientists, Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago, the Sierra Club, Environmental Law and Policy Center, and Environment Illinois.