St. Pete Champions Healthy Communities

Anyone who’s ever organized a dinner party has had a small taste of what it takes to meet disparate interests. The selection and planning process can be a painstaking “she-eats-this-but-is-allergic-to-that” journey. Okay, imagine every single guest has these different, often life or death needs and now you have a taste of collaboration between multiple organizations.

St. Petersburg’s Healthy St. Pete initiative has taken on this feisty collaborative role as the mobilizing force of the newly formed Health360 program. Born out of the Florida Hospital system’s Food is Medicine campaign, Health360 provides a science-backed approach to community health change by connecting and strengthening existing programming from partners like Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital.

Here’s how it works: St. Petersburg residents go to the Campbell Park Recreation Center in southern Pinellas County for one of three classes. A partnership with Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital offers First Steps: Fit4AllKids, a series for families with overweight children that addresses fun and accessible life adjustments. Lifestyle changes are more likely to stick when all family members participate, and the Health360 programming has kept that key to its design. A partnership with the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Extension Family Nutrition Program offers Cooking Matters, a family affair of food and fun in the kitchen. Health360’s final class series is in collaboration with St. Anthony’s Hospital and addresses small lifestyle changes for families who participate in its Diabetes Empowerment Education Program (DEEP).

The whole series’ original organizing home was in the Cathedral Church of St. Peter where Reverend Canon Katie Churchwell and other community health stakeholders saw an opportunity to strengthen and improve outreach. As she saw it, “Odds are, someone attending one class might benefit from another.” Connecting the classes allowed for stronger programming through essential components like streamlined data collection and the ability to incentivize the programming through expanding healthful food access for participants. Health360 furthers the process by offering produce vouchers.

Gulfport Produce courtesy of Greg Levitt
Gulfport Produce courtesy of Greg Levitt

Upon completion of every class, families receive a $10 voucher toward fruit and veggie purchases through a partnership with the locally owned and operated Gulfport Produce. The small family grocer offers Pinellas County residents fresh produce year-round. Owners Fey and Ryan Bernat were thrilled to join the growing Health360 family. They offer a robust, often Florida-centric selection and they track the pounds of produce that go to Health360 participants.

Gulfport Produce originally supplied a mobile market, setting up an on-site grocery experience. However, just as Food Is Medicine learned in Tampa, many participants had access to transportation, enabling them to visit the store in person where the selection was more extensive. It’s an interesting lesson with an intriguing history, and it doesn’t begin with our standard views of health at all. It begins with dignity.

Health 360. Photo by City of St. Petersburg.
Health 360. Photo by City of St. Petersburg.

A pantry formed in 1998 now known as the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger (BSCAH) began serving New York City’s food-insecure populations innovatively, paving the way for similar groups across the United States, including our very own St. Petersburg Free Clinic. Instead of passing out bags of pre-selected foods, BSCAH created a grocery-store experience, offering consumers the dignity of choice. They are able to select culturally appropriate foods for their homes and are not limited to bags of pre-chosen foods with which they may be unfamiliar or unsure how to prepare. BSCAH still uses the mobile market when community needs call for it, such as after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when geographic access was limited. Similarly, Health360 and Gulfport Produce have modified the use of their mobile model. For now, participants are able to visit the store in person or preselect produce from an extensive shopping list. The mobile market will likely continue, but it will be based on community needs.

This “community needs” approach is really what the full program represents. A participating mother wrote to Healthy St. Pete to boast of the amazing progress made. She proudly shared her son’s declining bloodsugar levels! She also reported that completing the series as a family helped their 5-year-old son become less picky because “he sees what [she] puts in [their] meals and has a better understanding of why.” It’s surely in the spirit of working together, sharing knowledge and research and reaching common goals that has made Health360 such a success and it won’t stop there. Healthy St. Pete’s Community Engagement Supervisor, Christina Bruner says Health360 will eventually expand their course offerings into other areas of community need. Keep an eye out; we may soon see additions like financial health, relationship building, and to close the food loop—perhaps even a course in edible gardening!

For more info, visit www.healthystpetefl.com.

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Nicole Brand
Nicole had her first article published in high school, and has not stopped writing since. She went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Communications, and fell in love with writing about all things related to food. She worked for publications on both sides of the Pacific, from Hawaii to New Zealand, before returning to live in St. Pete. She now works as a freelance writer for GBM as she completes her Master’s of Science in Food Systems. In addition, Nicole recently became Program Coordinator for the new Food Systems Center at Pinellas Technical College.