180.655.01 BALTIMORE FOOD SYSTEMS: A CASE STUDY OF URBAN FOOD ENVIRONMENTS

Students look closely at Baltimore City's complex food environment using discussion, experiential learning, discussion, lectures, service learning, and related texts. Students consider improvements to these systems to assure access to nutritious, adequate, affordable and sustainably produced foods, and to increase supply and demand of these foods; to address diet related disease; and to reduce food system environmental harms. Students "go backstage" with tour guides at sites around the city. Class sessions are primarily discussion-oriented, but also include lectures and guest visits. Students consider the relative impacts of access, demand, cost, stakeholder interests, administrative issues, history, and power, and consider the relative strengths of voluntary, governmental, legal and other strategies. They also consider applicability of lessons from Baltimore to other area food systems.

Upon successfully completing this course, students will be able to: •Describe how food systems and food environments relate to public health broadly and environmental public health more specifically •Describe from first-hand experience selected food system sites in Baltimore, including their offerings, clientele, and operations, and key opportunities and barriers to improving their healthfulness and economic and environmental sustainability •Conduct and document oral history interviews •Discuss key factors that have shaped food systems in Baltimore and other urban locales, including within the domains of policy, business, agriculture, and society •Analyze responses to particular challenges and opportunities within Baltimore 's food systems