Community Food Advocates

In a state as large as New York, a steady stream of smart, innovative work is coming from NYHealth grantees and non-grantees alike that is relevant to NYHealth’s priority areas of Building Healthy Communities and Empowering Health Care Consumers and its focus area on Veterans’ Health. These organizations should be elevating their work and informing key stakeholders at regional, statewide, and national conferences, meetings, and other convenings. Yet, because of a lack of resources, they are often unable to do so. To address this issue, NYHealth is awarding grants through its Sponsoring Conference Participation in Support of Healthy Communities, Consumer Empowerment, and Veterans’ Health Request for Proposals (RFP). Through this RFP, NYHealth sponsored low-resource organizations to attend and present at local, State, and national conferences related to these areas. In 2019, NYHealth awarded Community Food Advocates (CFA) a grant to participate in this initiative as part of its efforts to build healthy communities.

Under this grant, CFA sent two staff members to the National Anti-Hunger Policy Conference, co-sponsored by Feeding America and the Food Research & Action Center. The conference was directly related to CFA’s work on food access and covered a range of topics such as school meals, how to use research and data to make change, and advocacy opportunities. The conference was an opportunity for CFA staff to connect with both local and national players in the anti-hunger field and share best practices and lessons learned.

View a complete list of conference participation grantees.