Poster #130 - Tools for Policy Insight: Exploring the Healthy Food Policy Project Database

• In Event: Saturday Poster Luncheon

Abstract

The growing number and complexity of healthy food policy calls for tools that can facilitate rigorous and evidence-based analysis of policy data. The broad goal of this project is to design tools to enhance evidence-based decision making through transparent and structured presentation of policy data. We demonstrate our approach by providing summary statistics and creating an interactive data visualization tool based on the Healthy Food Policy Project (HFPP) database, which is a curated collection of 608 formally adopted municipal-level laws and policies that promote access to healthy food across 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. Developed through a multiyear collaboration among the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law School, the Public Health Law Center, and the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at the University of Connecticut, the HFPP database emphasizes not only health but also environmental sustainability, local economic support, and health equity—especially for marginalized populations. Our preliminary results identified key characteristics of local healthy food policies in the U.S. The majority of local policies were adopted at the city level (n=406, 66.8%) or the county level (n=152, 25%). Nearly one-third of the policies address emergency situations (n=174, 28.6%), and a similar proportion explicitly prioritizes marginalized populations (n=193, 31.7%). Legal strategies most commonly include setting standards (n=297, 48.9%) and expressly allowing something to support or promote access to healthy food (n=178, 29.3%). Policies are categorized based on six stages of the food system: grow, process, distribute, get, make, and surplus/waste. We found that policies most frequently focused on growing (n=204, 33.6%) and distributing (n=170, 28.0%) food. Fewer policies targeted processing (n=27, 4.4%), making food for private use (n=31, 5.1%), or managing surplus and waste (n=30, 4.9%). We also developed an interactive visualization tool that enables users to explore policy distributions and their relationship with state-level socio-demographic indicators. The tool allows filtering by multiple policy characteristics such as policy level and legal strategy, making it easier to identify patterns, gaps, and opportunities for policy intervention. This project provides a practical tool to support the analysis of local healthy food policies across the U.S. and enables users to explore policy trends, assess gaps, and compare strategies across communities. Beyond analysis, the tool is designed to raise awareness about healthy food access and provide resources for local leaders, advocates, and researchers working to advance equitable and community-centered food systems.

Authors

• Jingyu Li, Georgia Institute of Technology
  Presenting Author

• Congjing Zhang, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Shuai Huang, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Yanfang Su, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Co-Author