How Planners Are Helping Build Healthy Food Infrastructure in Boise

Elizabeth Hartig examines the work of Boise’s Idaho Plan4Health Coalition—"an emerging coalition working to understand the food and nutrition landscape of the neighborhood, and to clearly identify actions and interventions that will change this landscape for the better."

Comprised by members from the Idaho Chapter of the American Planning Association, Idaho Public Health Association, and the city of Boise, Idaho Plan4Health is focusing on food security, food quality, food literacy, food access and infrastructure, and food culture, as five key concepts for assessing and improving healthy eating.

Hartig reports that the group's work so far has "revealed a complex web of existing services and infrastructure that can be built upon and strengthened — from the circle of faith-based organizations taking turns to offer free dinners every night of the week, to the 'mobile farmer’s market' that arrives in the neighborhood every Monday afternoon during the summer, bringing fresh, locally grown produce to a crowd of kids and families."

Moreover, "The coalition’s work has also identified real barriers to healthy eating, such as Vista Boulevard, which bisects the neighborhood and complicates access to grocery stores for some families." Idaho Plan4Health has partnered on several efforts—like the Urban Land Institute’s Vista Corridor Study, the City of Boise’s Energize Our Neighborhoods initiative, and Let’s Move Boise—in looking for solutions to such barriers.