Paul Bass File Photo
CARE brigader Jonathan Gibson conducts surveillance at the Norton Package Store.
Picture this: You walk into the Norton Package Store. Instead of pork rinds hanging on the chips rack, there’s a basket of apples.
That’s what Jeannette Ickovics, Director of Yale CARE (Community Alliance for Research and Engagement) hopes New Haveners will see in the coming months after the introduction of their Healthy Corner Store Initiative Program.
She and her assistant director, Alycia Santilli, made those remarks to the Human Services Committee of the Board of Aldermen on Thursday. With the help of thirty-two New Haven residents, Yale CARE and its orange brigades spent two months mapping convenience stores and interviewing residents of in “low-resource, high-risk” neighborhoods: Dixwell, Fair Haven, Hill North, Newhallville, West River/Dwight, and West Rock.
They presented findings from the study Thursday.
“From pre-mature birth, to pre-mature mortality, all of these high-risk indicators are higher in these six neighborhoods,” says Ickovics.
Cristina Costantini Photo
Jeannette Ickovics and Alycia Santilli present findings to aldermen.
Here’s what they found: Two out of three stores in the six neighborhoods sell junk food and tobacco. Very few stores offer fresh fruit and vegetables.
“New Haven residents reported poorer health than U.S. residents on average,” said Ickovics. Only 38 percent of those surveyed eat at least one serving of vegetables daily. Seventy-six percent reported drinking two or more sodas a day.
Surveys also indicated that New Haven residents suffer from higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity in both children and adults. Ickovics and Santilli said New Haven residents have unhealthy eating habits due to economic restraints, a lack of awareness, and a lack of availability healthy food.
“When money is tight, do you buy the apple or do you buy the high caloric unhealthy foods that are cheap and that fill up your belly?” Ickovics asked the committee.
Encouraged by “successful programs” in New York City, Seattle, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Providence, and Hartford, Santilli will be heading up a pilot program in New Haven this fall.
The pilot program will target four to six convenience stores in Fair Haven, West River, and Hill North by offering licensing assistance, instruction on “how to stock healthier foods and how to market them,” and “technical assistance about figuring out where healthy foods come from and how they can get them,” said Santilli. If the program is successful, it will be introduced in more “low resource, high risk” neighborhoods in the city.
“We can and must do better for New Haven,” said Ickovics.