skip to main content
skip to newscasts

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Public News Service Logo
facebook instagram linkedin reddit youtube twitter
view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

SD public defense duties shift from counties to state; SCOTUS appears skeptical of restricting government communications with social media companies; Trump lawyers say he can't make bond; new scholarships aim to connect class of 2024 to high-demand jobs.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

The SCOTUS weighs government influence on social media, and who groups like the NRA can do business with. Biden signs an executive order to advance women's health research and the White House tells Israel it's responsible for the Gaza humanitarian crisis.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Midwest regenerative farmers are rethinking chicken production, Medicare Advantage is squeezing the finances of rural hospitals and California's extreme swing from floods to drought has some thinking it's time to turn rural farm parcels into floodplains.

Legislation Aims to Help Folks Stuck "Buying Their Dinner at a Gas Station"

play audio
Play

Thursday, June 13, 2019   

INDIANAPOLIS – Congress is considering steps to bring healthy groceries to food deserts in Indiana and across the country.

Grocery stores work on a notoriously thin margin. And as Kate Howe, managing director of the Indy Hunger Network, points out, when some grocers close, the folks in impoverished rural and urban areas can end up forced into, as she puts it, "buying their dinner at a gas station."

"Often what they're left with is convenience stores and gas stations and fast food,” she explains. “You can't have a healthy community without healthy food, so if we want healthy people in our communities we have to help them get access to that food."

The Healthy Food Access for All Americans Act is designed to provide incentives to keep or bring grocery stores with healthy offerings to neighborhoods and small towns without them.

Howe says Indianapolis has had a growing issue with food deserts. Democratic Rep. Andre Carson is one of the co-sponsors of the bipartisan legislation.

Supporters say keeping a grocery store also is hugely important to keeping communities economically healthy.

Howe says grocers are an anchor for a neighborhood – providing jobs, economic stability and other important connections beyond healthy food.

"Once a grocery store moves out of a community, then other services start moving out, and we end up with these areas of concentrated poverty,” she states. “If you're in a neighborhood where there's no bank, no grocery store, the folks that can afford to move out will. So it really does cause those neighborhoods to deteriorate."

Small, rural communities may lack the population to support a grocery store. When similar state-level legislation helped save some small-town groceries in Minnesota, store owners there say some local folks were "moved to tears" by the fact that their local grocer would stay open.


get more stories like this via email

more stories
Corporate partners sign contracts to offer a graduate assistantship and pay the students. In turn, MSU pays the graduate assistant's tuition, fees and salary, so the assistantship is directly tied to the academic experience. (pressmaster/Adobe Stock)

play sound

By Victoria Lim for WorkingNation.Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi for Missouri News Service reporting for the WorkingNation-Public News Service Col…


Social Issues

play sound

A new report brands Connecticut's tax system as "regressive" for low- to middle-income residents and uses a report from the state to make its point…

Environment

play sound

Backers of a new federal rule said it will increase fairness for livestock and poultry producers, in North Carolina and across the country. The U.S…


A study by the advocacy group Inseparable showed one in five adults said at any given time, they consider their mental health to be either 'fair' or 'poor.' (Adobe Stock)

Health and Wellness

play sound

Mental health care advocates are encouraging federal agencies to adopt a proposed update to regulations which would expand access to psychological car…

Social Issues

play sound

With hotter summers bringing hotter working conditions, the Maryland Department of Labor is implementing a heat stress standard to protect workers …

Social Issues

play sound

By Jimmy Cloutier for OpenSecrets.Broadcast version by Roz Brown for Texas News Service reporting for the OpenSecrets-Public News Service Collaboratio…

Environment

play sound

Recreational fishermen in New England say commercial trawlers are threatening the survival of smaller businesses relying on a healthy stock of Atlanti…

 

Phone: 303.448.9105 Toll Free: 888.891.9416 Fax: 208.247.1830 Your trusted member- and audience-supported news source since 1996 Copyright © 2021