Groundwork is partnering with the Health Department of Northwest Michigan (HDNWM) on a Building Healthy Communities program to make healthier food choices easier to make and ultimately impact our communities by reducing the incidence of chronic disease.
Local agriculture is increasingly appreciated not just for tasty food but also for community health -and what’s good for our health can also be good for business.
A whopping 68 percent of residents of the five-county Traverse City region are overweight. The good news is that doctors, public health experts, and employers are teaming up with small farmers and getting creative.
A conference slated for January 29, 2016 at the Grand Traverse Resort & Spa aims to build valuable connections between locally grown foods and wellness in schools, the healthcare sector, the workplace, and the broader community.
Because of collaboration between the organizers of two back-to-back conferences in January at the Grand Traverse Resort, farmers now can learn practical tips on how to tap into wellness markets in hospitals, schools and workplaces. Employers, hospitals, schools, health practitioners and others at the same time can learn their own practical tips on how to use local farm foods to benefit their health and wellness initiatives.
New businesses are working to meet the growing demand from buyers for locally grown food, and more food service directors are flexing their buying power and insisting that distributors figure out how to offer the option to buy local.