FreshLink is the core research of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods (PRCHN). In 2017, FreshLink implemented and evaluated the FreshLink Ambassador intervention, in which nine community leaders trained to serve as ambassadors at three farmers’ markets in Cleveland.
PRCHN will host the FreshLink team for a panel presentation titled “Community Ambassador Model for Promoting Access to Farmers’ Markets” Wednesday, Oct. 11, at noon in the ground-floor conference room of the BioEnterprise Building.
The presentation will review the FreshLink Ambassador approach, provide preliminary findings, and showcase FreshLink Ambassadors, facilitators and farmers’ market staff engaged in the study. The peer-to-peer outreach model was designed to increase awareness of and social connectedness to farmers’ markets among people receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.
Panel members will be:
- Darcy Freedman, an associate professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and associate director of PRCHN. Freedman’s research is focused on community-level food environment interventions. She is the principal investigator of the FreshLink study.
- Rachael Sommer, the FreshLink study program manager. She holds a master’s degree in social science administration and has spent her career working in clinical social work, public policy, and public health throughout Cleveland.
- Jeanette Toms, the owner of the Good Earth Farmstand in Cleveland’s Cudell neighborhood. She and her husband, Tom, started as community garden leaders and later took their passion for gardening to the next level by starting the farmstand in 2013.
- Delores Gray, who served as the intervention implementation assistant for the FreshLink Project during the 2017 outreach season. She is also Today’s International Woman National Queen, a literacy developer, owner of Brickhouse Wellness and a community advocate.
- Anita Brindza, executive director of Cudell Improvement Inc., a community development corporation. A lifelong Cleveland resident, she served as a FreshLink Ambassador during the 2017 outreach season.
Learn more about upcoming events in the PRCHN seminar series.