Food Bank of the Southern Tier

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 is sponsoring low-resource organizations to attend and present at local, State, and national conferences related to these areas. In 2019, NYHealth awarded the Food Bank of the Southern Tier a grant to participate in this initiative as part of its efforts to build healthy communities.

Under this grant, the Food Bank of the Southern Tier sent two staff members to attend the Closing the Hunger Gap conference. This conference addressed how systematic inequities, such as health disparities and food scarcity, are directly related to the health of communities. The conference specifically examined the impact of race and racism and how they can be understood as a social determinant of health. Conference participants attended multiple field trips to learn about innovative programs and locations such as urban farms, Soul City (a city built for and steered by African Americans), and Native American farms. Attending the conference helped the Food Bank of the Southern Tier understand health disparities and become better equipped to build sustainable communities with open access to nutritious foods.

View a complete list of conference participation grantees.