The Issue 

• Brockport currently faces an unequal distribution of healthy food options. with many fast-food chains. This creates barriers for students and people who live in Brockport to gain access to healthy food and affordable options.
• Adding new, healthy businesses to Brockport would help promote equitable access to healthy foods for those facing economic or transportation-related barriers and fight social injustices related to food quality and security.

Key problems 

• Over-saturated with fast food/chain restaurants- healthy, locally owned options are scarce.
•  High costs of healthy food- nutritious meals are often unaffordable for students and low-income residents.
• Barriers for new businesses – starting a restaurant or food business can cost $30,000–$500,000, making it difficult for small, local entrepreneurs to compete.
• Limited availability of commercial spaces – finding suitable locations to start a business is challenging, which slows down the growth of healthier dining options.

Call For Justice

What we want to change. 

• Equitable accessibility of (healthy) food in Brockport.
• Business start-up grants for small, healthy businesses.
• To whom – Village of Brockport, Town of Sweden

Why this Matters

• Aims to enhance overall health by tackling food consumption and accessibility.
• Help provided to new businesses can allow them to start up and provide reasonable prices to the community.
• Ensures transportation is not a barrier to accessing nutritional food in Brockport.

How?

• Demand that the Village of Brockport gives local businesses financial support to start up via grants.
• Giving financial stipends or tax breaks from the town to new business owners, giving them a boost during the opening of their business.
• Affordable and healthy proposed menu options will be required from each in accordance with guidance from the USDA. 

The Research Shows...

• Poorer diets have been proven to correlate with worse health outcomes, with past research showing neighborhoods with higher prevalence of fast-food options also having a higher prevalence of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes (Odoms-Young et. al., 2024). 
• There are currently at least 9 fast-food chain restaurants in Brockport and a handful of small business restaurants. The local grocery stores are also large chains, including Wegmans and Walmart.  These grocery stores are in the downtown section of Brockport, posing barriers for residents without transportation. 
• Public transport to grocery stores is especially important in low-income areas to increase access to healthier food options. On the 2024-2025 census, it was reported that out of the 7, 277 Brockport residents, 16.1% of them fall under the poverty line, with 38% of households reporting their annual income as under $50k (United States Census, 2024).              
• Strategies to address the nutritional disparities seen in neighborhoods with higher poverty levels have included better public transport, savings at the manufacturer's level that can be passed onto the consumer, and establishing more food stores (Russell et. al., 2022).
•  Increasing the availability of healthy foods on a local level can help decrease reliance on transportation to access healthier foods. Aiding small businesses that provide healthy foods can help increase equitable access and can help to establish more food stores overall (Russell et. al., 2022). This will tackle current social injustices in the area along class lines and will promote food and nutritional security in Brockport.
• The USDA notes that nutritional security involves not only the quality of the food, but the equitable access of this food (Russell et. al., 2022). Increasing the saturation of healthy food options in Brockport in central places, such as Main Street, would not only increase the accessibility of healthier food options but also aid in the equitable distribution of these sources.

In Summary

• Promoting new, healthy businesses in Brockport would help residents have more equitable access to nutritional foods.
• We must demand that the Village of Brockport provide financial assistance to new, healthy businesses.
• We must approach this social issue from a resident-centered standpoint to ensure we address all barriers towards food access, from transportation to class status.

Sources:

Odoms-Young, A., Brown, A., Agurs-Collins, T., Glanz, K. ( 2024). Food insecurity.  neighborhood food environment, and health disparities: State of the science, research gaps, and opportunities. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 119(3), 850-861. DOI: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2023.12.019  

Russell, C., Whelan, J., & Love, P. (2022). Assessing the cost of health and unhealthy diets:  A systematic review of methods. Current Nutrition Reports, (11), 600-617 DOI:10.1007/s13668-022-00428-x