2023 IMPACT REPORT
Healthy Kids
•
Healthy Places
•
Healthy Futures
•
Healthy Kids • Healthy Places • Healthy Futures •
6
Rite Aid Cities
28
Funding Partners
$10M
Over Two Years
Changing Habits, Changing Lives: Centro SOL Guides Families to a Healthier Future
The Active and Healthy Families Program focuses on reducing childhood obesity for Latinos in Baltimore
When Yessica Marroquin comes to work, she’s on a mission to solve an age-old riddle – just how can parents get their kids to eat more vegetables?!
To be fair, that’s only one issue that Marroquin encounters as the community outreach specialist for Centro SOL’s Active and Healthy Families Program (AHF), which supports healthy lifestyle changes for Latino children who are overweight or obese.
The Baltimore-based program brings together parents and children with healthcare professionals who can guide them on healthy eating habits, introduce new exercise options and put them on a path toward healthier futures. Most families are happy to join the program, which focuses on more than dieting alone.
“My role is to welcome them to the journey of the lifestyle change,” Marroquin said, adding, “We do not ask the participants to stop eating, but together we explore healthier options and reduce unhealthy ones.”
After the pandemic halted the AHF pilot phase, Johns Hopkins and Centro SOL relaunched the program with support from Rite Aid Healthy Futures, which contributes funding to the program as part of its $10 million Strengthening Cities signature initiative. It’s all part of a two-year commitment to address hunger and food-insecurity issues in six major Rite Aid markets: Baltimore, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Fresno and Philadelphia.
Overall, the Strengthening Cities Initiative aims to reduce health disparities for children and youth in city neighborhoods. At the same time, the grant program supports change-making organizations as they grow, innovate and serve their communities.
Centro SOL, Baltimore.
While Centro SOL helps parents make healthier refreshment choices, it strives for children to do more than give up sugary drinks for six months. The goal is lasting change, said Dr. Sarah Polk, who works closely with Centro SOL as medical director of Baltimore Medical Systems Yard 56 clinic located across from the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.
A total of 28 organizations across the six selected cities have received funding to date. All the partners focus on youth and families, with an emphasis on serving neighborhoods that are predominantly Black or Hispanic. And all have been battling similar issues, chiefly systemic racism and a lack of access to fresh and healthy food that can cause problems downstream – like obesity and a host of related illnesses.
That work takes root in many ways, often quite literally through urban agriculture programs that turn vacant city blocks into safe spaces where children and teens connect with the earth. Elsewhere, food rescue programs and food banks do all they can to keep family pantries stocked with well-balanced food options.
Making it unique from other Strengthening Cities partners, Centro SOL addresses the issue from a more clinical perspective, serving a city where 1 out of every 3 school-aged child is obese, according to the Baltimore Health Department. Sugary drinks remain one of the largest drivers of the issue.
Centro SOL, Baltimore.
Modeled after a program developed by the Public Health Department in Contra Costa, California and adapted for Baltimore’s more urban setting, Centro SOL’s AHF program was developed specifically for Latino immigrant families. Area pediatricians refer children ages 5 to 12 to the free program, which consists of eight group appointments over the course of 16 weeks attended by a child and at least one parent.
Conducted in Spanish, the classes touch upon themes like healthy eating and how to introduce fun physical activity into everyday life. Involving the families and breaking down language barriers has been essential to the program, which also connects families with neighbors dealing with the same challenges.
Preliminary results have been encouraging. Seeing children’s body mass index decrease after involvement in the program is indicative of children growing in healthier ways.
“I think about how desperately people want their kids to be healthy,” Polk said. “There’s so much stigma around being overweight and obesity. But these are families. These are parents who care just as much about their kids as I do about my kids. They find themselves in a difficult place, and for them to realize they’re not alone and there are things they can do is super cool.”
To date, 14 cohorts of parents and children have participated in the program. Polk hopes the seed funding from Healthy Futures will help attract additional corporate support, as well as federal funding that could help Centro SOL reach even more families.
So far, the small successes stand out to Marroquin and Polk, who are happy to see families limiting fast food, reducing sugary drinks and making small changes that compound over time.
In one case, a 9-year-old girl with a BMI in the 99th percentile and elevated blood pressure in the 95th percentile recently reported she’s practicing with a jump rope every day. Not only can she do more than 50 jumps in a row now, her blood pressure has fallen to normal ranges.
Marroquin has even made progress with that age-old dilemma of convincing kids to eat more vegetables. One boy participating in the program introduced salads into a diet that used to include mostly pizza, fried chicken and processed foods. At this last pediatrician's visit, his doctor reported he had lost five pounds.
“That’s really exciting,” Marroquin said. “He can see the change.”
Centro SOL, Baltimore.
Our partners have used funding from Rite Aid Healthy Futures to connect with their communities in new and exciting ways. Here’s what just a few of our Strengthening Cities partners have done so far in service of healthy kids, healthy places and, ultimately, healthy futures.
Healthy Kids: Fresno Metro Ministry Teaches Good Nutrition
Nutrition education, fresh foods and innovative leaders are the perfect ingredients for improving health outcomes and reducing food hardship, and Fresno Metro Ministry is bringing those important elements – and more – to its neighborhoods.
From cooking classes and local gardens to youth development and neighborhood revitalization, Metro is digging in deep to the challenges facing Fresno. Over the last eight years, the organization has built a network of hundreds of overlapping community partnerships, each bringing positive change to kids and families in their own unique ways.
Metro’s programming includes Cooking Matters, a 6-week cooking and nutrition education course designed to inspire students of all ages. The class introduces healthy, budget-friendly recipes that students can share with the whole family. It’s been a hit with kids and parents alike. Kids love the interactive nature of the class – not to mention the tasty end results – and adults love that the nutritious meals can easily be recreated at home. In 2022 alone, Cooking Matters benefited over 600 students.
Metro’s community food partnership, Food to Share, helps connect neighborhoods to healthy eating habits, too. By getting resources directly to distribution centers around the city, the program eliminates common barriers to nutritious food, like lack of access to grocery stores or transportation. And thanks to funding from Rite Aid Healthy Futures, Metro was able to redistribute over 1.1 million pounds of food in just the first nine months of 2022.
Fresno Metro Ministries, Fresno, California.
Healthy Places: Norris Square Neighborhood Project Creates a Safe Haven
For kids and teens living in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, walking to school means coming face-to-face with the tragedy of the opioid epidemic every day. It can also mean living without easy access to nutritious food options.
Norris Square Neighborhood Project (NSNP) wants to be part of the solution for their Philadelphia neighborhood by offering safe spaces for youth to explore cultural and social justice issues, create art and develop sustainable agriculture skills. Through all its work, NSNP looks to create opportunities for the community to engage with Latino traditions and heritage.
NSNP provides youth with a host of programs designed to help them lay the foundations for their future while improving their present. Plus, its six community gardens are the perfect place for the surrounding community to grow vegetables, participate in a cooking class or learn more about Latino culture. The gardens grow various plants, including Puerto Rican crops uncommon to Philadelphia’s urban agriculture, such as gandules and oregano brujo.
Funding from Rite Aid Healthy Futures supports NSNP’s youth garden apprentice program, Raíces de Cambio (Roots of Change), where students learn about food systems, are exposed to urban farming and run a weekly farm stand that provides free, fresh produce to their community. In 2022, the program trained 13 new youth apprentices, allowing them to grow produce, harvest food, create marketing strategies, and practice basic accounting.
Norris Square Neighborhood Project, Philadelphia.
Healthy Futures: The FARE Project
Food access raises everyone – it’s a truth so powerful that it makes up the name of our partner, FARE. Based in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where nearly 14% of the population is insecure, FARE supports those who are most affected by the social determinants of health.
Through programs like Community Collectives, which convene neighborhood members and connect them to funding, resources, and training, FARE is putting power back into the hands of the community to identify and address their challenges with autonomy. FARE also develops programming that provides nutrition education, coupons, urban agriculture training, summer youth employment, fresh foods and other resources to their neighbors.
FARE is committed to not reinventing the wheel, but rather to identifying and supporting existing efforts and filling gaps as needed, typically from a behind-the-scenes support role.
With an eye toward the future, FARE also supports its partners with strategic planning for long-term stability and increased collective vision and impact.
The FARE Project, Cleveland.
Community Leaders Convene at Summit
Though they had never met, Carmen Del Guercio and Dr. Sarah Polk found themselves talking easily in a conference room in Philadelphia in September of 2024. Both hail from Baltimore, where Del Guercio serves as president and CEO of the Maryland Food Bank and Dr. Polk serves as co-director of pediatrics at Centro Sol, a community program run by Johns Hopkins Hospital.
The two community leaders forged the new connection during the Rite Aid Healthy Futures’ inaugural Strengthening Cities Summit, a two-day event that convened leading voices and advocates for food sovereignty and food access from Baltimore, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Fresno and Philadelphia.
During their time in Philadelphia, 54 attendees connected with, learned from and supported others working in a field that can be challenging and, at times, isolating. Guests were farmers, CEOs, staff members and youth leaders – all of whom play important roles in the Strengthening Cities initiative. Most summit attendees came from grassroots organizations that focus their work on youth and families, as well as predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods
Summit guests connected with each other on everything from board governance and sourcing staff to fending off land developers and preparing the next generation of food access and sovereignty leaders. For many, the chance to have open and in-depth conversations with others in the space is a rare one.
“It’s just incredibly inspiring if you think about everybody’s energy and focus and the commonalities of the challenges we’re facing in our various communities,” Del Guercio said.
The event featured guest speakers, like Malik Yakini, who has long been hailed as one of the fore founders of the modern food sovereignty movement. He’s also one of the co-founders of the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network (DBCFSN), a Strengthening Cities partner.
Attendees also got a chance to visit a local Philadelphia partner, Bartram’s Garden, where they learned more about Bartram’s unique approach to food access and explored Sankofa Farm, which grow over 60 different crops and wild foods.
Here's what guests said about the summit in their own words:
“The summit made me realize how important my role as a farmer is and gave me a blueprint of the work I need to do moving forward”
Shae McCoy,
Senior Farmer,
Intersection of Change
“The Rite Aid Healthy Futures summit was a meaningful way to connect with others from across the country who are all working to address issues of food access, equity, urban and farming. It helped foster relationships, let us be inspired by what colleagues are doing, and share ideas and strategies to support our work.”
Todd Marcus, Executive Director, Intersection of Change
“The Strengthening Cities Summit was unique and powerful in that it provided a space for diverse participants to come together for a common purpose yet be their authentic selves, sharing from the depths of their situations from a historical (cultural) context and lens of each community served.”
Stanya Greathouse, CEO,
Teen Start Inc.
“The Strengthening Cities Summit allowed me a space to connect with individual from other states that are fighting the same fight as we are here in Fresno. We were able to share and glean ideas to collectively strategize how to shift the paradigm around food insecurity, health disparities, and economic hardships. We became one family that had rooms in many states.”
Emogene Nelson,
Executive Director,
Fresno Metro Ministry
“It was inspiring and empowering to meet organizations doing similar work in different cities. I learned so much from listening to others, and I am very grateful that we were able to meet and come together through the Rite Aid Healthy Futures Strengthening Cities Summit.”
Loc Tran, Program Manager Grassroots Gardens of Western New York
