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Guest Blog - Planning Fellow Hannah Laurison
A ROC 2007 Planning Fellow, Hannah is a policy analyst with the Public Health Law Program’s Land Use and Health project , where she specializes in community and economic development. Prior to joining PHLP, she staffed an $80 million public-private initiative that worked to develop new grocery stores in Pennsylvania’s low-income communities.

August 10, 2007
When I was invited to participate in the Roots of Change Planning Fellows program, I challenged myself to learn as much as possible from the other Fellows about how each of their perspectives on the food system might be applied to my work with urban planners and public health advocates.  I am trained as an urban planner to think about how the built environment affects our interactions with other people and with the environment.  In my current position at Public Health Law & Policy, I train public health professionals to use the tools of land use planning to increase access to healthy food in underserved communities.  


Land use planners have not traditionally been engaged in food systems planning.  However, in the past two or three years, a new opportunity has emerged as public health advocates are beginning to draw explicit connections between the rising epidemic of diet-related diseases, such as obesity and diabetes, and the lack of healthy food choices in many low-income communities.  In communities throughout California, public health advocates are working with their local planning departments to increase access to healthy food retail in underserved communities.  While this trend is encouraging, there is still more work to be done to build connections between public health and sustainable agriculture advocacy.  

I came to Roots of Change seeking a broader context for my work.  What opportunities are there to form broad health coalitions beyond those practitioners concerned with obesity and other diet-related diseases?  And what kinds of relationships could be built between sustainable agriculture advocates and other environmentalists?  During our second session, Joseph asked the Fellows to try to answer the question: "What is deeply needed in the food system?"  As I sat on the porch in the hot June afternoon, I realized that I had been asking myself the wrong questions.  Building a sustainable food system does not require that we be able to draw a line from point A to point B, but rather that we begin to see ourselves as part of a common solution.  I was reminded of the analogy used by Frances Moore Lappé, who speaks of how easy it is to feel like just a drop in the bucket.  Yet, she argues, buckets fill up pretty quickly in the rain.  The problem we face is not in being a drop; it's in not seeing the bucket.  The work of the Planning Fellows and all of us who care about building a sustainable food system is to make that bucket visible.  

What would it mean to make the bucket visible?  It means that when we describe our work, we use language that is clear, accessible, and resonant so that our intentions become clear and the alternatives become visible.  It means that we continually look for ways to bring new voices to the table and that we invest the time to understand the perspectives of those who are different from us.  And it means that we look for wins on intersecting issues.  As the Roots of Change planning session came to a close, it was incredibly rewarding to see advocates from all different sectors of the food system defining ourselves as part of a common movement.  I look forward to rolling up my sleeves with my new friends and creating a food system of which I would be honored to be a part.

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