10-18-2006, 12:55 PM
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Dragon Rider
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Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Center City
Posts: 3,699
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Progress Plaza in USA Today
An interesting article on promoting health and preventing, rather than reacting to illness, focuses on North Phila:
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition...over18.art.htm
Quote:
New Rx Help people to avoid getting sick
Officials push smoking bans, fresh vegetables
By Steve Sternberg
USA TODAY
PHILADELPHIA With its fried chicken restaurant, wig emporium and half a dozen shuttered shops, Progress Plaza looks more like an urban eyesore than a laboratory on the frontier of public health.
Yet, despite its dilapidated, gap-toothed appearance, the nation's oldest black-owned shopping center is the setting for a landmark study that will test whether having easy access to fresh fruits and vegetables improves a community's sense of health and well-being.
As part of a major face lift to be completed in late 2007, Progress Plaza is about to get a gleaming new grocery store.
It's a natural experiment, the first of its kind in the country, says Allison Karpyn, research director for the Philadelphia-based non-profit The Food Trust, a program that finds innovative ways to bring more healthful foods into urban neighborhoods, public schools and grocery stores.
This urban experiment is one of countless new initiatives designed to improve people's health in states, cities and communities across the USA. It is not about covering the uninsured or tinkering with the medical system; it's about making it easier for people to avoid getting sick in the first place.
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Quote:
The Philadelphia experiment is a rare attempt to determine whether providing access to fresh fruits and vegetables can put a neighborhood back on track. The SuperFresh Grocery store moved out of Progress Plaza in the 1990s; it will be replaced with a fully stocked The Fresh Grocer.
Karpyn and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of London will compare fruit and vegetable consumption in the Progress Plaza area with that of a similar community that only has corner stores selling such things as doughnuts and chili dogs.
We have housing developments all around here. Our people don't shop for the month. They shop for a couple of days. They don't have the money. They can't carry it. They have no place to put it, says Anita Chappell, 70, secretary of Progress Plaza's board. She is one of about 4,000 local churchgoers who were inspired by the late Rev. Leon Sullivan of Zion Baptist Church, whose $10-a-month investments built the plaza in the late 1960s. They eagerly await the new grocery store.
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