New Project
Towards a Gender-Inclusive Food Sovereignty Assessment of Health: the case of Haiti
Principle Investigator: Marylynn Steckley
April 8, 2021
Haiti has one of the highest levels of food insecurity in the world, and the island nation is particularly infamous for its acute rural food insecurity, food import dependence, and malnutrition. Rapid Food Security Assessments tell us that the diets in Haiti are increasingly reliant on processed, imported foods, and alongside hunger and malnutrition, we see population-level rises in rates of obesity, heart disease, and chronic hypertension. But there is almost certainly a gendered picture here that is missed. In rural Haiti, marital/relationship status, place, and a distinct gendered division of labour bear heavily on a woman’s access to income, status, and food. We believe that gender inequalities impact women’s health, and that mainstream Rapid Food Security Assessments are missing gendered health disparities. Our research project is motivated by needs for an integrative Gender-Inclusive Food Sovereignty and Health Assessment tool that considers social and environmental determinants of health in addition to nutrition.
This is a 1-year project funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR). Our team brings together 8 Haitian and Canadian researchers, and 27 community-based stakeholders in Haiti. Our project is rooted in the conceptual framework of Food Sovereignty, a multi-scalar framework that suggests that goals of poverty reduction, improved nutrition and healthy food provisioning, and environmental health, are best accomplished when decision about food, agriculture, and environments are democratic and decentralized.
New Video
Ottawa’s Food Deserts and the Foodies Coalition
By: Caroline Leal-Purchase, Sarah Doherty Hillman, Holly Laroche, Shanon Mcnulty, & Julianne Payne
April 6, 2021
Students in Global and International Studies at Carleton care deeply about food, and equitable local food systems. One group of students used a course project to amplify advocacy for more just food systems in Ottawa through stunning video: Ottawa’s Food Deserts and the Foodies Coalition
This video was submitted as part of Dr. Marylynn Steckley’s third year GINS3020 course, “Places, Boundaries, Movements and Environmental Change”. Students were asked to create a 1-minute advocacy piece (ie. video, radio, poem, TikTok), and this video is a testament to the creativity and dynamic advocacy work that students are doing!