Kass On The Healthy Food Financing Initiative: Lack Of Funds Won't Stop Food Desert Fight

A Top White House Food Story, 2011: Congress funds key component of Let's Move! campaign, but at $298 million below Obama Administration's request...
In a year when reducing the federal budget was a months-long battle in Washington, it is almost a miracle that the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) got funded at all. A crucial component of First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign, which she has been promoting for almost two years, the HFFI is an inter-agency project from the Treasury, Health and Human Services, and USDA that will provide things like grants, low-interest loans and new market tax credits for grocery stores and other projects to be built in food deserts. It was created to help achieve Mrs. Obama's goal of eradicating America's thousands of food deserts by 2017, and will bring "critical resources to communities that really need it most, where it's actually connecting the needs of people and businesses," said Sam Kass, Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives (above).

President Obama's budget for FY 2012 asked for $330 million for the HFFI. But Congress allocated just $32 million in the "megabus" appropriations bill the President signed on Dec. 23rd, though the HFFI is "a key component of the Administration's efforts to combat childhood obesity," according to the White House. USDA estimates that 23.5 million* people, including 6.5 million children, live in about 6,500 food deserts in the continental US, urban and rural areas where there is no or very low access to fresh fruit and vegetables and other healthy foods. The national childhood obesity rate is about 17%.

Despite not getting $298 million in requested funding, the $32 million is a win for Mrs. Obama: Congress declined to fund the HFFI at all for FY 2011. In October, Kass said he "firmly believed" the First Lady's goal of eradicating food deserts will be achieved. But five years and 6,500 food deserts breaks down to more than 1,300 projects that must be created each year to meet the 2017 deadline. (Above: Mrs. Obama announcing private sector food desert commitments)

Will the loss of $298 million in hoped-for funding derail the plan?

It's going to make the rapid push "very difficult," Kass admitted.

"But it doesn't mean we're going to give up on working to solve this problem," he said.

Kass pointed to the major private-sector pledges Mrs. Obama got for the Let's Move! campaign this year, when corporations including Walmart, Walgreens, SuperValu and regional outlets committed to build or transform grocery stores in food deserts, with as many as 1,500 projects being completed in the next five years. The pledges are a huge achievement for the Let's Move! campaign, he said.

"Obviously the more resources to solve this challenge the better," Kass said. "But we didn't need that [federal] financing for a lot of companies to step up and make the commitments."

None of the major corporations in the Let's Move! partnership are receiving HFFI funding, according to the White House. Walmart has already opened 20 of the 275-300 markets it has promised, according to Senior Vice President for Corporate Affairs Leslie Dach. Walgreens has unveiled some of its revamped outlets, which now offer healthy foods.

Kass said that there'll be more Let's Move! work on eliminating food deserts in 2012, but declined to give details, other than saying that the Treasury will be awarding more grants for the HFFI. In September, Treasury awarded its first funding for the HFFI for FY 2011, $25 million in grants for projects to twelve Community Development Financial Institutions in nine states. This was the first financial activity for the HFFI, since Mrs. Obama unveiled it in February of 2010. The award profiles are here. Other regional food desert commitments from the private sector were announced in October.

There will be more corporate partnerships for the Let's Move! campaign in 2012; that's the goal of Partnership for a Healthier America, the non-profit foundation created to continue Mrs. Obama's work. She's the honorary chair, and PHA manages and monitors such initiatives.

"There's a lot of ways that we can solve this," Kass said about eradicating food deserts.

From the FY 2012 megabus, $22 million of the HFFI funding will be through the Treasury Department, and $10 million through the Department of Health and Human Services, as part of the Community Economic Development Program. USDA could allocate more funds from various programs to HFFI projects, too.

The White House regards building super markets in food deserts as a job-creating project that revitalizes communities; "thousands of jobs" will be created by the private sector commitments to build in food deserts, numerous White House aides said during the Walmart/Walgreens/SuperValu announcement. The HFFI is modeled on a state-level project in Pennsylvania, and will, in theory, "leverage" millions more dollars than the actual funding into local economies.

In October, the First Lady and Kass, along with other Administration officials, traveled to Chicago for the first-ever Let's Move! Food Desert Summit, where Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the President's former Chief of Staff, brought together Mayors from across the US to discuss ways to eliminate food deserts and boost community involvement in Let's Move!.

USDA's original "implementation plan" laying out the framework for the HFFI IS HERE {PDF}.
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*USDA has two different ways of calculating what constitutes a food desert, and one method cites 13.5 million as the number of people living without access to healthy food. For both calculations, USDA says that 6.5 million children live in food deserts. Mrs. Obama, Kass, and all other White House officials use the higher population number when discussing food desert initiatives.

"How USDA defines food deserts is obviously a challenge and a work in progress and I think we're going to continue to evolve that tool," Kass said when asked about the variation in food desert population numbers.

"What's important here is that the country is coming together to solve that issue."

Related: Read this pocket guide to the Let's Move! campaign, which explains the five pillars that constitute the Administration's childhood obesity effort. Download the full White House Childhood Obesity Task Force Report [PDF]. In 2011, Congress showed itself more likely to protect the interests of business rather than child health, as the recent forays into potato and tomato regulation for school lunches indicate.

*Photos by Eddie Gehman Kohan/Obama Foodorama