As a student, it’s important to get access to healthy food, in order to perform better, but with the price of food rising at an incredible rate, sometimes it can be hard to make those healthy decisions. Toronto was a place of interest to me, as I am a Toronto native, and as I was researching statistics about food and diabetes, I stumbled upon the Urban Health Equity Assessment and Response Tool Toronto (Urban HEART) study. This study covers many different aspects of health equity, with the goal to promote it throughout different sectors to make health and social equity a reality. The data they had collected was extensive and in-depth, which helped me further develop the idea to promote green infrastructure, instead of just food security since the data for Toronto was not as clear. I felt that the data was more compelling when you compared mental health, Walkscore and green space, as well as diabetes, and the average amount of healthy food stores within walking distance.

‘Hood Health is a project centered around the low-income neighbourhoods in Toronto, and how their health was being affected by their environment. My solution was a proposal pamphlet aimed to raise awareness about green infrastructure among residents to help improve their health and well being. A lot of the major changes in the city seem to happen around the popular, or more wealthy neighbourhoods, without much thought to the low-income neighbourhoods. If green infrastructure can help low-income neighbourhoods improve their overall health and wellness, then it would be an incentive for the rest of the city to make these changes too.