By Rose Chavez | Food System/Food Equity Coalition
The Archuleta County Nutrition Security and Health Equity Assessment, which kicked off in December 2021, continues its ongoing work to engage the community through a Community Learning and Leadership Circle (CLLC) that meets on a weekly basis.
Our approach is to conduct an assessment that captures people’s voices and lived experiences related to access to food and primary/preventive health care in Archuleta County.
The CLLC is made up of a group of diverse Archuleta County community members who are committed to contributing to the design of the assessment during this first phase of the project, which will conclude at the end of June. CLLC members engage in learning through module presentations facilitated by Healthy Archuleta and partner organizations about the concepts of nutrition security and health equity.
On a weekly basis, the CLLC members identify questions as a result of their participation in these learning sessions. These questions are then used to help inform the assessment as it relates to 1) primary/preventive health care access and utilization (coverage, timeliness, workforce and services) and 2) bolstering our community-based food system (food production, food transformation, marketing and distribution, getting and preparing food, eating nutritious foods, food safety, food waste prevention and resource recovery).
As part of the assessment process, both food and health care organizations will also have the opportunity to share information as it relates to primary/preventative health care and food efforts. In subsequent weeks, Healthy Archuleta will host health care partners during our virtual Community Conversation platforms to discuss issues of health care access and utilization.
For questions, please contact us at fsfearchuleta@gmail.org or (401) 371-3227. To donate to support the work of Healthy Archuleta, doing business as the FSFE-Food Coalition, please visit: https://www.foodcoalition4archuleta.org/donate.html.
