In exploring lot of different majors within ENR, and even moving outside of the school, I discovered the field of Public Health. I’ve really become interested in this field and so I wanted to do something with regards to that. I began to think about health care and allowing everyone access to the care and services that they need, but I couldn’t think of how that fit into the 3 P’s of Sustainability. I’m taking a class this semester called Introduction to Global Public Health and we had recently talked about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. I decided to go look at those in hopes of finding something that would spark my interest and that I’m passionate about.
In looking through the website, I discovered the topic of food insecurity and then I started thinking how I could tie that to public health. I thought about how access to healthy food correlates with chronic diseases. I also thought about the local food movement and its effects on health and local economies. I wanted to try to tie them all together somehow but it all seemed a little too complex with so many different factors. I think that I’m going to focus on the topic of environmental justice in the discrepancy of access and distribution to healthy foods.
This topic hits on all three P’s of sustainability:
Planet: We know that there is more than enough food grown to feed every single person in the world, but the problem is in the distribution of that food. This issue will be discovering the root causes of the ineffective distribution of food.
People: One’s socioeconomic status can greatly influence how close their nearest grocery store is, what types of food options are readily available to them, and how much money they have and are willing to spend on healthier foods.
Profits: The local economy directly benefits form the people who choose to buy locally sourced foods, and they can then invest that money back into helping the community.
SOURCES:
http://thefoodtrust.org/uploads/media_items/grocerygap.original.pdffile:///var/folders/db/ybzdsjgs4391v1pgxz40kf4m0000gn/T/IMG_7097.jpg
https://www.columbus.gov/publichealth/groups/Health-Disparity-and-Health-Equity/
https://www.uua.org/action/statements/ethical-eating-food-environmental-justice