March 2026 Swetland Seminar || Gaining Consensus on Metrics of Nutrition Equity for Urban Food Systems

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Join us for the monthly Swetland Seminar Series, a free learning opportunity open to the public, focused on environmental health. Learn more at case.edu/swetland.

Commonly used measures for assessing local food systems, such as food security or healthy food access, do not provide guidance into the series of actions involved in transforming these outcomes. To address this gap, our community action research project studied implementation mechanisms (i.e., series of linked actions) involved in community-led efforts to transform urban food systems to achieve goals of nutrition equity. Our data were derived from the perceptions of 18 community leaders identify­ing as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) planning to implement food justice initia­tives in Cleveland, Ohio, United States.

To begin operationalizing these implementation mechanisms, we conducted an ExpertLens panel, bringing together about 60 community-based, organizational, and systems-level champions for nutrition equity in urban food systems. Through an iterative, 3 round process, a national sample of Experts rated and commented on the relevance to nutrition equity and feasibility to measure the process or outcomes of 15 implementation mechanisms derived from the aforementioned 18 community-food justice leaders. We will report our findings from this study from Fall 2025 and discuss next steps needed to advance this work.

Panelists:
- Darcy Freedman, PhD, MPH
Director, Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health at Case Western Reserve University
- Owusua Yamoah, PhD, MA
Research Scientist, Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health at Case Western Reserve University

Learn more here: https://case.edu/swetland/research/nourishing-power-network/consensus-building-metrics-nutrition-equity

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