A Message from the President and CEO 2021

Partnership for a Healthier America’s work has come a long way since its founding in partnership with Mrs. Obama’s Let’s! Move initiative. The last year has been an important year for PHA in ways large and small. We’ve partnered with 281 new companies and community based organizations; we’ve added top talent; we set a bold goal of adding 50 million servings of fruits and vegetables to the marketplace by 2025 - we are well on our way.

We’re leveraging the power of public and private sectors alongside the charitable food system to transform the food landscape in pursuit of health equity. Our goal is for every American, in every zip code, to have affordable access to good food.

Here are several highlights detailed in our our Annual Progress Report:

• In partnership with Michelle Obama, we delivered more than 1 million plant forward meals to families in Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, Fresno and Philadelphia.

• We provided 18 million servings of fruits and vegetables to families in 28 cities — and we did it in a way that builds a lifetime habit of produce consumption.

• Our work with 59 food banks across the country means that 14.7 million families are getting access to health-building vegetables and other nutritious food.

• We are successfully working with 10 companies that are saturating the marketplace with more than 150 products that meet PHA’s highest requirements.

• We laid the groundwork to pilot both demand for, and supply of locally grown, nutrient dense crops in the Mississippi Delta.

• We are raising awareness about PHA’s pursuit of food and health equity at our annual Summit attended by more than 25,000 people, and through the release of our Defining Food Equity Paper.

• We continued working with the private sector to make the healthy choice, the easy choice and to encourage companies to focus on marketing practices that promote healthier options.

This is meaningful change but there’s always so much more to be done, so what’s next? As we think of those on the receiving end of any of our programs, know that we are always taking the long look at what happens when our program ends? I’m glad to say the food banks who join our program will forever have healthier inventories for those millions they serve; the families who participate in Good Food for All will forever be fans and consumers of vegetables, but only if they can get them.

Which highlights a critical point: We also need system change in the marketplace to make the long lasting change we seek. There are two ways we will do this:

So, PHA will pilot the sale of quick, great-for-you meal kits at prices that compete with fast food. We will test the sale of these kits in schools, in partnership with community based organizations and at retail. This is critical work.

We can’t achieve health equity without food equity and we can’t achieve food equity without you. So a big thank you to our many partners in every sector and to our community supporters. Together we can make progress toward food and health equity.

Thank you, Nancy E. Roman
President & CEO
Partnership for a Healthier America