Meet the D.C. grad school alums bringing food justice to their communities
By Andrew Erickson
Lillie Rosen has just what the doctor ordered: an apple a day—or a pear, or a tomato. As deputy director of DC Greens, she helps provide fresh local produce to Washingtonians with diet-related illnesses through the nonprofit’s Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program.
“It’s an actual physical prescription,” says Rosen, who joined DC Greens in 2013 after graduating from American University’s (AU) School of International Service (SIS) with a master’s degree in peace and conflict resolution. Participants bring the Rx to the “farmacy” at their local farmers market and receive 10 dollars’ worth of produce a week for each member of their family. Hundreds of recipients have lost weight, but more importantly, they’ve started getting regular checkups. As Rosen says: “They’re getting a literal carrot to come and see their health care provider.”
Rosen has always had a healthy appetite for food systems.
As a child in Takoma Park, Maryland, she questioned where the meal on her plate came from. As an undergrad studying in Nicaragua, she began thinking more critically about the pesticides used in food production after suffering a nosebleed at a banana plantation. As a grad student, she wrote her thesis on guerilla gardening in Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Pittsburgh, examining how community members take green matters into their own hands by growing plants on land they do not own.
Now at DC Greens, Rosen advocates access to healthy food as a basic human right. She’s committed to increasing all Washingtonians’ access to fresh, nutritious, affordable and culturally appropriate food and dismantling the structures and policies that exacerbate inequality.
“We think about the structure of the city, think about why people are missing the food that they should have and advocate for a city that provides [fair] access to food,” Rosen says.
For example, 75 percent of the District’s food deserts—communities with limited access to healthy, affordable food—are located east of the Anacostia River in Wards 7 and 8, areas with a higher concentration of low-income people and residents of color. Between the two wards, there are only three grocery stores for more than 160,000 mostly African American residents. In more affluent Ward 3, which has a significantly lower population of people of color, there are 10 for more than 80,000 people.
Like Rosen, many alumni of AU’s graduate programs have turned education into impact, combining knowledge gained in the classroom and through internships with their passion for broadening food access, promoting health and limiting waste. And by meeting community members where they are, AU faculty and alumni have gained valuable insights into systemic food inequality while working tirelessly with community activists, organizers and policymakers to remedy it.
“I grew up in the D.C. area,” Rosen says, “and just wanted to have an impact in the city I lived in.”
Food as a form of preventative care
Stacey Snelling began her career as a hospital dietician, developing and implementing nutrition plans for patients. But, for many, the interventions came too late.
“You quickly realize that if people could learn about this in their day-to-day life, they would be empowered to take control of their lifestyle and avoid the downstream of poor diet and sedentary behavior,” says Snelling, who earned her master’s degree in health fitness management from AU in 1985 and her doctorate degree in counseling and development in 1990.
According to a 2018 Reuters report, only eight percent of adults receive preventative health care services, including blood pressure and cholesterol checks, cancer screenings and counseling on obesity, depression and tobacco and alcohol use.
That’s why Snelling, who chairs the health studies department in AU’s College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), has made a career of meeting people where they work, worship, live and learn to help them understand their health conditions and try to improve their outcomes. She and her AU colleagues are tackling grant-funded research on childhood obesity—which impacts 21.4 percent of youths ages 10 to 17 in D.C.—in Wards 7 and 8. Through the Healthy Schoolhouse 2.0 program, the AU team is engaging teachers as “agents of change” who promote nutrition in the classroom and plant the seeds of healthy habits.
Often, a nutritious diet is neither accessible nor affordable, but it is a rather effective prescription. Eighty percent of heart disease, stroke and Type 2 diabetes cases could be prevented by a healthier diet, according to the World Health Organization.
Food as preventative care first resonated with Katherine Donnelly in her 20s, when she was uninsured and living off of bartending tips. Now, she spreads that wisdom to others as a nutrition education specialist at the Capital Area Food Bank. Donnelly trains doctors to screen patients for food insecurity and direct them to the food assistance network. She also holds cooking demonstrations throughout the D.C. area and partners with local food banks to incorporate nutrition education into food distribution, providing clients with affordable and accessible recipes that take into consideration literacy, English proficiency and limited cooking utensils.
Donnelly says her online master’s degree in nutrition education from American University’s CAS helps her distill the science of food in a way that resonates with clients.
“People might not want to nerd out on the benefits of vitamin A, but you can say, ‘Hey, this will help your eyesight and your immune system,’” she says. “Then people might buy that.”
Tackling the food waste crisis
Food rarely travels in a closed loop between those who have too much and those who don’t have enough—which means it’s dumped in landfills at an alarming rate.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, about 1.3 billion tons of food—a third of the amount produced for human consumption—is wasted every year.
While working toward her master’s degree in global environmental policy at AU’s School of International Service, Lesly Baesens became curious about the environmental, economic and social repercussions of food waste. Now, as a food waste recovery program administrator with the City of Denver, Baesens meets with businesses, nonprofits and government officials to curb food waste and educate Coloradoans about its scale and impact.
A head of lettuce, for example, takes an average of 25 years to decompose in a landfill, and decaying food waste releases methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
The challenge for food systems experts like Baesens lies in turning awareness into action. Households account for the largest share of food waste at 43 percent, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and a Natural Resources Defense Council study found that 76 percent of Americans believe they waste less food than their neighbor.
“Clearly something doesn’t compute,” Baesens says. “It’s complex, because food is very personal. People don’t want to waste food, yet they do it anyway. So how do we get to behavior change?”
As a fellow at the D.C.-based Food Recovery Network (FRN), Erin Price—who graduated with a master’s degree in public administration from AU’s School of Public Affairs in 2017—helps save truckloads of food by pairing event organizers across the country with nonprofits in need of donations.
On Super Bowl Sunday, she improvised to salvage an important food haul. While in Miami for an event for 3,000 people, Price learned that the nonprofit she had arranged to pick up the leftovers had to cancel at the last minute.
“This is Super Bowl Sunday, so nobody’s really available to come,” she says. “I just had this fear in my heart, and I couldn’t leave knowing I was going to be responsible for a truckload of food going in the trash.”
With her executive director’s blessing, she rented a van and made three trips to the Miami Rescue Mission, offloading five pallets of produce and proteins for distribution at area homeless shelters.
And with that, 5,000 pounds of food justice was served.
Learn more about the impact you can make with a graduate degree from American University.
Brad Scriber contributed to this report.
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