Louisville/Jefferson County, Kentucky residents have large disparities in health outcomes that are related to many social determinants of health such as race, socio-economic status, residential address, educational attainment, etc. The Center for Health Equity in Louisville releases a periodic Health Equity Report that captures both the challenges and the places for innovation in improving community health. The 2017 Health Equity Report identified food systems inequities as a major root cause of the health disparities in Louisville, KY (https://louisvilleky.gov/government/center-health-equity/health-equity-report). A coalition of local food and food access community organizations that included the Extension Food Systems Specialists decided to collaborate in the application for a USDA Regional Food Systems Partnership Grant to develop a community-based Food Policy Council that could work with the Center for Health Equity and other government entities to advocate for community-based changes that would improve health outcomes for residents. While the Extension Specialist was not a named grant applicant, they provided support to the group in the outline and scope of project and agreed to provide support should the application be approved. The grant application was successful and from 2022-2024, the coalition engaged in community-based development of what would become the Greater Louisville Food Council (GLFC).

In 2023, the Food Systems Specialist worked with the grant group to do research on food policy councils (FPC’s) and helped conduct interviews with other FPC’s and examined many different by-laws and founding documents. The Specialist joined the team that wrote the by-laws for the Greater Louisville Food Council. Once by-laws were created, the Specialist and others worked to develop an application, an application dissemination plan and then an application scoring guide.

The application to join the Greater Louisville Food Council was opened to the public in the spring of 2024 and a total of 48 people applied. As a part of the application review team, the Food Systems Specialist scored and reviewed all applications and then helped facilitate a conversation with the review team that offered council “seats” to 25 individuals in June of 2024. By July of 2024, 21 people had accepted the invitation to join the first FPC in Louisville and the FPC development team, agreed that 21 people fit the bylaws.

The Food System Specialist supported other community members to convene the first three meetings of the GLFC that happened in July, August and September. The Food System Specialist will continue to provide background support for the GLFC as they move forward by offering such items as research and making connections to local agencies.