Humana has invested $62,000 in Feed The West to help address food insecurity and other health disparities in Louisville’s West End neighborhoods. This is part of Humana’s new “Louisville Community of Opportunity” initiative, a population health strategy aimed at collaborating with new and existing partners to focus on health equity in Louisville’s West End.
Louisville Community of Opportunity aims to remove obstacles to good health care by addressing social determinants of health and increasing health care education and access to care. As part of the Community of Opportunity work, Humana is allocating resources and financial support to create and strengthen collaborative partnerships with organizations and businesses serving Louisville’s West End community, including Feed The West.
“Health equity is about ensuring that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible,” said Keisha Smith, Associate Director, Population Health Strategy. “To achieve our vision of a healthy West End, we must address the root causes of food insecurity and deepen our understanding of structural and systemic inequities that disproportionately impact socially disadvantaged populations. This means making healthy, affordable food available and accessible to everyone. That’s our commitment and passion. Joining with Feed The West as part of our Community of Opportunity work is a great opportunity to move further down that path.”
#FeedTheWest is a food justice movement that is one of the program offerings of Change Today, Change Tomorrowopens new window, an organization devoted to eradicating the barriers that impact the Black community in Education, Food Justice, and Public Health. Initially, Feed The West was an emergency program created to deliver high quality food to West End residents living in a food desert. When the program started in June 2020, they provided an online form for Louisville West End families to sign-up for free food. Over 900 African American/Black families signed up to secure healthy foods for their families. In less than 2 months, Feed The West served 13,784 West End residents. To date, they have given over 31,000 African American/Black people free access to healthy foods and nutritional meals.
“Humana’s support of our efforts at Feed The West demonstrate an incredible opportunity,” noted Shauntrice Martin, director and founder of Feed The West. “The partnership with Humana enables us to extend our mission of solving food insecurity and of directly addressing community economics and food justice in the West End.”
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