Herkimer County HealthNet has been creating opportunities for those residing in Herkimer County to gain education on healthy eating habits. Herkimer County HealthNet’s healthy store initiative helps store owners identify and promote their healthy and fresh food selection.
By working with store owners, the initiative works to make it easier for families to find healthy food options by providing stores with shelf talkers, and posters that use a traffic light concept to identify healthy foods.
Carney’s Corner located in Herkimer is the second of many stores to accept this initiative in their store. The initiative aims to help customers choose more fruits, vegetables and whole grains which can help to reduce the risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. Elyse Enea, HCHN Program Coordinator said, “Corner stores are frequent destinations for children, many of whom stop daily on the way to and from school for snacks. Corner stores are a great place to identify healthy food choices and make them available and easy to find”.
In order to join the Herkimer County HealthNet Healthy Store Initiative, store owners must allow a brief store assessment that will be used to determine all of the healthy items already present in the store. Once the assessment is complete the store owners commit to promoting products in their store classified as healthy, chosen from the assessment, examples include fresh or frozen fruits or vegetables, whole grain pasta, and dried beans.
Development and implementation of the Healthy Store Initiative was supported by Local Impact. The Local IMPACT initiative supports the statewide goals of improving population health, transforming health care delivery and reducing health disparities. Herkimer County HealthNet partners with HealtheConnections to implement Local IMPACT within Herkimer County.
The Mission of the Herkimer County HealthNet is to improve the health and well-being of individuals who live, work, play, and learn in Herkimer County. For more information on this project contact Elyse Enea, Program Coordinator at Herkimer County HealthNet, 315-867-1552 or eenea@herkimercounty.org.