Developing Community-Academic Partnerships

to Impact Detroit’s Food System

Amanda Canavatchel, Madeline DeMarco, Angela Hong, Katlyn Kleimola,
Kevin Liu, Amanda Richman, Emily Torres, Cate Vreede, Malcolm Cunningham, Dana Thomas
Institution Affiliations: Public Health Action Support Team (PHAST), University of Michigan School of Public Health

INTRODUCTION RESULTS
The University of Michigan School of
Public Health’s Public Health Action
An interdisciplinary community-academic • Implemented a model for meaningful
community-academic partnerships
Support Team (PHAST) partnered with the that are mutually beneficial for all
Detroit Food Policy Council (DFPC) to partnership highlights the lessons learned of parties.
develop Detroit City Council district-level
descriptions. These descriptions provide in
depth examinations of each districts’ local
describing district-level food systems in Detroit.
food environment in order to illuminate
potential health and economic policy
opportunities as identified by DFPC and
Detroit Health Department (DHD).
"Partnering with the PHAST students allowed us to
METHODS visualize disparate data points in a new way, and
have a much deeper understanding of the food
Quantitative & qualitative methods: landscape for Detroit residents in each city council
district than our capacity as a small nonprofit
Literature Power would otherwise allow."
Review Mapping -Amy Kuras, Research and Policy Program
Manager, Detroit Food Policy Council
Benefits and challenges of Varying definitions of communities in Merging data to provide
students entering the data and stakeholder perspectives cross-district and district-specific
partnership as outsiders information

Stakeholder Data
Interviews Aggregation Take a picture to
access the full
report • Created informative community
descriptions that can be utilized by
Sources: Detroit Food Policy Council; City of Detroit Department of Neighborhoods; Reference USA; Detroit Food Map Initiative; Detroit DFPC and DHD to further community
Community Markets; America’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative; PolicyMap; Good Food Report; 2017 Detroit Food Metrics Report; Nieslsen
TD Linx
and policy work.