Our Mission
Urbanhealthconnect is dedicated providing the opportunity for a healthy lifestyle to all communities regardless of socioeconomic background. We are currently focused on drawing attention to urban food deserts that lack the foods necessary for a good and healthy diet. We aim to decrease the number of food deserts in the world and strive to bring greater awareness to the issue. We also work to help those not living in food deserts but that still lack a daily proper meal. Food insecurity has been increasing dramatically over the past few months, and Urbanhealthconnect aims to combat this problem by any means available.
The ProbLem With Food Deserts
The problem of food deserts is very prevalent throughout the world, although on the surface it may seem like not a problem at all. Although it may seem like families in these food deserts are eating a sufficient amount of food, the problem is the food itself, for they eat foods that lack the proper nutrition for a healthy meal. The importance of nutrition cannot be understated, for a good nutrition leads to countless health benefits, whereas a poor nutrition leads to many health complications, resulting in a shorter lifespan. The reason as to why these families eat these meals is not because they chose to be unhealthy. Rather, it is because of many underlying reasons such as their socioeconomic standing, the long distances that they have to travel to get to a grocery store or farmer’s market to get affordable nutritious foods, and whether or not they take public transit. Since there are many reasons as to what makes a food desert, it is sometimes hard to exactly know what a food desert is, so the United States Department of Agriculture defines an urban area as a food desert if it is 0.5 or 1 mile away from a source of affordable, nutritious food, whereas a rural area is considered a food desert if it is 10 or 20 miles away from a source of healthy, affordable food.
​
Search on a map of food deserts here