Northern Investing for Health Partnership

Work is currently underway to establish a Community Food Forum, led by the Health Action Zone, to support community-based, innovative approaches to local food initiatives in the Northern area.

Many community, voluntary and statutory sector partners across the Health Action Zone areas are already working on a range of community food initiatives, including;

• Allotment schemes
• Community cafes
• Luncheon clubs
• Promotion of fresh fruit & healthy eating
• Cook-it! & other cooking skills programmes 

One of the aims of all these initiatives is to provide affordable, healthy food to local people.

The Health Action Zone proposes to hold Community Food Forum meetings 3-4 times per year to share experiences and learning within the HAZ network. The venues for these meeting will rotate around community bases in the Health Action Zone neighbourhoods. It is anticipated that the first meeting will be held in January 2010.

The Community Food Group will:-

• provide opportunities for dialogue within the NNHAZ areas to share learning and good practice on community food initiatives
• support the development of initiatives which encourage people to make affordable healthy food choices
• provide support and identify actions required to initiate and further develop local projects relating to  production and consumption of healthy food
• support information exchange on and use of evidence-based practice
• support presentations from guest speakers on issues of interest to the forum

HAZ partner groups and organisations have been invited to submit an Expression of Interest to join this group.

Further details can be obtained from the Northern HAZ team.

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