MVOC’s Healthy Communities campaign is rooted in the lack of access to opportunity in urban neighborhoods, how that lack of opportunity results in social determinants of health, and addressing the disparities in health that follow. We believe that good health results from a set of interconnected social conditions, while ill-health results from a series of related barriers that distance entire populations from the opportunity to thrive.
Food Policy and Access
Nationwide, 23.5 million Americans – especially in low-income neighborhoods, communities of color, and rural areas – live in communities without access to healthy, affordable foods. Research shows that the lack of access to healthy foods is associated with a higher risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other diet-related disease, and that increasing access to healthy foods can lead to better health. Through our Food Policy and Access strategy, MVOC seeks to improve neighborhood health by strategically building cross-sector partnerships between neighborhood associations, community development corporations, community supported agriculture groups, faith-based institutions, and nonprofit agencies to consider the overarching implications of inadequate access to care and healthy choices – and together we are working to change the policies and structures that support these conditions.
Rather than genetics, lifestyle, or health care, research has shown that a combination of place-based physical, economic, and social characteristics – and public policies and the institutions that shape them – are the true causes of inequitable distribution of well being in our cities. Environmental justice is the equitable promotion of healthy community environments that protect the health of all people - and MVOC engages a diverse base of residents, increasing their collective capacity to identify and advocate for community-based strategies to address disproportionately high and adverse health and environmental effects on low-income populations and communities of color, and to provide community input regarding transportation planning, land use, economic development, and proposed growth scenarios in our region.
Two years ago, MVOC joined OOC in leading a statewide fight to protect the critical safety net of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid: important social programs that support Ohio’s most vulnerable residents. These programs bring all Ohioans together: Ohio’s senior citizens worked hard for these commitments, which have provided a good quality of life for generations and Ohio’s younger workers are working hard to ensure these commitments continue to provide a good quality of life for future generations. Hard working Ohioans spent generations paying for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid out of their paychecks, so that each of us, no matter your station in life, can live and retire with dignity and freedom from want.