Baz Perry, Equitable Food Systems Coordinator, CCE-Tompkins
Since our Program’s first year, MPH students, faculty, and staff have helped build coalitions with local agencies aiming to improve access to healthy food and education for youth and families in communities surrounding Cornell. Students have conducted needs assessments, written grant proposals, and designed and implemented evaluation plans for Universal Free Breakfast, Produce Prescription, Farm to School and many other programs in the local Tompkins County community, collaborating with Cornell Cooperative Extension Tompkins County (CCETC) and other agencies.
For one of these projects, the MPH Program joined other members of the local Childhood Nutrition Collaborative and Headwater Food Hub to apply for New York State (NYS) funding to coordinate a local buying program across eight school districts in the county. According to the National Farm to School Network, exposure to local foods and nutrition education can increase children’s willingness to try new fruits and vegetables, which can lead to improvements in diet quality, behavior, and educational performance.
The Tompkins County Farm to School Project (TC F2S) was first funded in 2019, when NYS announced $1.5 million in awards to support Farm to School programs across the state, along with a large reimbursement incentive to school districts that purchased at least 30% of their lunch ingredients from NYS farms. In Tompkins County, the funding allowed CCETC to hire a Farm to School coordinator, who helped to bring together food service directors and cafeteria staff from eight school districts to form a community of practice based around the purchasing, cooking, serving, and record keeping of NYS-grown ingredients. “One of the coolest things I see coming from this grant is that all the school food directors are working together as a community, and this has helped sustain them during the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Baz Perry, equitable food systems coordinator for CCETC, who now directs TC F2S.
MPH students worked with TC F2S coordinator Chloe Boutelle to create an evaluation plan, design and distribute surveys to students and cafeteria staff across districts, and then analyze and report on the data. “Working with the MPH students has helped our schools track the progress they made in local food purchasing,” says Boutelle. “They helped us pull and evaluate data to achieve our grant goals, and they bring valuable skillsets and dedication to every project they work on.”
TC F2S has exposed over 11,000 children to new “Harvest of the Month” recipes each month, like butternut squash soup, braised greens, and roasted cauliflower, made with fresh, seasonal, farm-grown ingredients. Over two years, the project has contributed an additional $282,678 toward the purchasing of local NYS products in schools.
“It’s vital that the MPH Program continues to have their voice at the table with Farm to School,” says Perry. “It’s really helpful as a nonprofit with limited resources to delegate specific projects to students and know they will be completed in a professional, evidence-based way that is communicated well.”
Written by Audrey Baker