2011 Midwest Real Food Challenge Summit: Urban Food Systems in

Development

Jim Bloyd, MPHFebruary 19, 2011 3:30 – 4:40 p.m.

Northwestern University @j_bloyd

jimbloyd@gmail.com

Structural Racism in the Food System: A Public Health Perspective

• Workshop Proposal: Real Food Challenge activists can create alliances with local public health departments for policy change campaigns. Public health has a long though contested history of struggle to achieve health equity through a focus on the social determinants of health. The 30-minute film Unnatural Causes: Is inequality making us sick is a tool for mobilizing affected communities around food issues and building support. This workshop session will guide participants through identification of online sources of local and state health department data useful for making arguments for creating sustainable food systems; (please bring your laptop, or share!); Discussion will include equity models of population health, neoliberalism, structural racism, and tips on use of population health data. The workshop facilitator has more than 20 years experience of practice in three local public health departments.

W.E.B. DuBoise

“THE GENERAL OPINION IS THAT THE DEATH RATE OF NEGROES is higher in the North than in the South. This is untrue. The crude death rates of the Negroes in the Northern cities are lower than those in the Southern cities. . . of the large cities, the eight highest death rates are Southern cities—Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, Richmond, Norfolk, Nashville, St. Louis and Atlanta. Thirty deaths per 1,000 seems to be the dividing line between the Northern cities and theSouthern, most of the Southern cities having a rate above 30, while most of the Northern cities have a rate below 30.” May 29, 1906

‘50’s, 60’s, Chicago and the USA

$1,000,000 per day was estimated paid by blacks in Chicago in 1958 under a racist contract buying system, enriching white slumlords and elite investors. (Satter, 2009)

Agenda

• Intro• View Unnatural Causes• Discussion• Finding and Using online health data for your

organizing/ report out• Evaluation/ Conclude

Structural RacismStructural Racism/RacializationThe word “racism” is commonly understood to refer to instances in which one individual intentionally or unintentionally targets others for negative treatment because of their skin color or other group-based physical characteristics. This individualistic conceptualization is too limited. Racialized outcomes do not require racist actors. Structural racism/racialization refers to a system of social structures that produces cumulative, durable, race-based inequalities. It is also a method of analysis that is used to examine how historical legacies, individuals, structures, and institutions work interactively to distribute material and symbolic advantages and disadvantages along racial lines. Kirwan Institute

Closing the Gap in A Generation Final Report of the Commission on the Social Determinants of Health (WHO, 2008)

3 tips on Health Data

• A rate (Ex: deaths/1,000 people) may be better than a count (Ex: # of deaths) when making comparisons.

• An increase may not be significant (statistically)

• An increase (or decrease) may not be a trend. Two points do not make a trend.

Develop a relationship with your local health department epidemiologist. Ask around and understand your data.

Search online

Searches:1.‘infant mortality Cook County Department of Public Health IL’2.‘food access cook county IL’3.‘cook county strategic plan health equity’4.View www.chwHEALTH.org/cni

5.Your search: diabetes mortality in ________________County, or city or state6.Choose a social determinant: _______________ in ____x__ place7.Choose “plan” or “strategic plan” then ___x__ health dept in _x_ place.

8.Assemble your 10 minute rough draft health equity campaign and tell the group!

Neo-liberalism: What? Why Important?

• ‘The assumption that individual freedoms are guaranteed by freedom of the market and of trade is a cardinal feature of neoliberal thinking… a state whose fundamental mission is to facilitate conditions for profitable capital accumulation is a neoliberal state . The freedoms it embodies reflect the interests of private property owners, businesses, multinational corporations, and financial capital.

Harvey, D., (2009) p. 7.

Values: Freedom (Karl Polanyi, 1944)

Good Freedom‘Conscience’‘Speech’‘Meeting, association’‘Choose ones own job’

Bad Freedom• ‘Exploit one’s fellows’• ‘Make inordinate gains without

commensurable service to the community’

• ‘Prevent tech inventions from being used for public benefit’

• ‘Profit from public calamities secretly engineered for private advantage’

Harvey, D., (2009) p. 36

Polyanyi

“The idea of freedom ‘thus degenerates into a mere advocacy of free enterprise’ which means ‘the fullness of freedom for those whose income, leisure and security need no enhancing, and a mere pittance of liberty for the people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of the owners of property.’”

Harvey, D., (2009) p. 37

Resource

• Fairchild et al (2010): The mandate of public health-Can public health promote social, economic and political reforms?

• The ‘New Public Health:’“The old public health was concerned with the environment; the new is concerned with the individual” Hill (1913)

ResourceBlack–White Health Disparities in the United States and

Chicago:A 15-Year Progress Analysis (Orsi, et al, 2010)

• Findings: “Overall, progress toward meeting the Healthy People 2010 goal of eliminating health disparities in the United States and in Chicago remains bleak. With more than 15 years of time and effort spent at the national and local level to reduce disparities, the impact remains negligible.”

Social Production of Health & Illness

“ Do we not always find the disease of the populace traceable to defects in society ”

-Rudolf Virchow,

in a late 19th century speech 1821 - 1902

VirchowVirchowMay the rich remember during the winter, when they sit in front of their hot stoves and give Christmas apples to their little ones, that the shiphands who brought the coal and the apples died from cholera. It is so sad that thousands always must die in misery, so that a few hundred may live well.- Rudolf Virchow, Werk und Wirkung (Berlin: Rütten & Loenig, 1957), p. 110

US Dept. of Housing And Urban Development

Researchers can now accurately predict life outcomes from health to education to life expectancy based on the Zip Code in which a child grows up . HUD believes that no child’s life chances should be determined by the neighborhood where their family resides.

Acknowledgment of sources of material in this presentation:

Thank you to:• Linda Murray• Howard Waitzkin• Steve Seweryn