450,000 People Live in Food Deserts in the Cleveland Area

Ginger Christ reports that as many as 450,000 people in Cuyahoga County, Ohio live in a food desert, lacking convenient access to healthy food and suffering from higher risks of chronic disease.

The recently released Cuyahoga County Supermarket Assessment mapped the county's food deserts to illustrate the scale of the problem, including neighborhoods in the city of Cleveland and its suburbs, and overlays the food desert map with demographic data. According to Christ, the project identifies "about 20 spots in the county, in areas such as Glenville and Bedford Heights, where access to healthy food is the most difficult."

While the article is able to report the recent opening of a supermarket in Euclid, details about the efforts of the Cuyahoga County Board of Health's Creating Healthy Communities program are lacking in the article. The county's program is made possible by funding from the Ohio Department of Health, and more information is available online and in the video found below.