Tulane team releases guide to best local food and nutrition work

Emily Szklarski today@tulane.edu
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Diego Rose is a professor in the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine who specializes in socioeconomic determinants of nutrition, food and nutrition policy, food access, security and sustainability. (Photo by Paula Burch-Celentano)

Navigating the New Orleans food and nutrition scene just got easier. An interdisciplinary team at Tulane University recently developed the “Resource Guide to Innovative Work in Food & Nutrition in New Orleans.” This free guide was produced by Tulane Nutrition, part of the university’s School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, with support from The Food Trust’s Center for Healthy Food Access and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Tulane staff from the Tulane Prevention Research Center (PRC) also assisted in this effort.

“We strived to develop a comprehensive listing of innovative organizations doing food and nutrition system work in New Orleans,” said Diego Rose, Tulane nutrition professor. “Nothing like this guide currently exists.”

The team wants to support groups working throughout the food system — such as those growing, distributing and marketing food, as well as those educating about healthy choices — stay informed about what others are doing, all with the hope of building synergies through collaboration.

The guide can be found and downloaded for free on the Tulane nutrition website at sph.tulane.edu/nutrition.

The information in this guide was collected using an online survey fielded in the fall of 2017 and was designed to examine the landscape of social innovation in food and nutrition in New Orleans. A list of organizations doing such work was compiled from previous lists that had been developed by the Tulane team, Propeller, the New Orleans Food Policy Advisory Committee and Fit NOLA.

“We hope local residents and community-based organizations find this guide useful in some small way. We look forward to comments and feedback, not only for improving future iterations of this guide, but also, and more importantly, for improving the New Orleans food and nutrition system,” said Rose.