Rhode Island reports the highest levels of childhood poverty in New England, with an estimated 27,000 children affected. Meanwhile, the federal budget reconciliation bill passed in July is slated to cut funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the National School Lunch Program, potentially affecting about 144,000 RI residents and 76,000 RI school children, respectively.
An effort to address the nutritional needs of Rhode Island children, the Little Harvest Produce Box program is delivering locally grown fruits and vegetables to child-care programs in high-poverty RI neighborhoods. The goal of the pilot project is to help increase access to healthy, fresh foods and to support healthy eating habits.
Little Harvest is a collaborative effort between Alison Tovar, associate professor of behavioral and social sciences and interim director of the Center for Health Promotion and Health Equity (CHPHE) at the Brown University School of Public Health; Sarah Blau MPH ’23, nutrition coordinator at the Rhode Island Department of Health; and colleagues at Farm Fresh RI, the URI SNAP-Education program and the Southside Community Land Trust.
The Little Harvest Produce Boxes began being delivered last May and will run until the end of September. We spoke with Professor Tovar, who was involved in the design and conceptualization of the program and is responsible for evaluating its effectiveness.
Walk us through the initial vision for the Little Harvest program and how it came together.
I've been working within early care and education for years, conducting research to understand how to implement policy, systems and environmental changes in these settings to improve nutrition outcomes.
A few years ago, when Sarah Blau was a Master’s student at Brown, she did her thesis with me on a different topic—examining the lived experiences of stigma, mistreatment and fear among families using federal food assistance programs. Her work offered important insights into how structural and interpersonal discrimination shape food access and utilization, deepening her understanding of the complexities of food insecurity.
Not long after, the Department of Health applied for and received a Centers for Disease Control grant through the Healthy Eating and Active Living Program. The goal was to make nourishing food and active living more accessible and affordable for all Rhode Islanders. One component of that grant focused on farm-to-early-care-and-education.
Because I was already working in this area, I connected with Randi Belhumeur, program administrator at the Rhode Island Department of Health, who was just starting to develop this part of the grant. They needed a nutrition coordinator, and Sarah’s expertise in food security and her experience working with diverse communities made her an ideal candidate. She’s been leading much of the farm-to-early-care-and-education work since then.
As part of the early phase, we conducted a landscape assessment to understand what was already happening in child-care centers and family-run child-care homes—whether they were getting local fruits and vegetables, and if they were doing any food-related education.
On the evaluation side, I helped lead a statewide survey of providers to gain a clearer picture of current activities. The survey revealed that while over half of programs serve some local food, most are unfamiliar with farm-to-early-care-and-education, and many face barriers such as cost, quality and vendor access—yet nearly 80% expressed interest in expanding these activities.
We also launched a “community of practice," housed within the Rhode Island Farm & Sea to School Network, to bring together child-care providers, state government and community-based organizations to think about how to adapt successful farm-to-school efforts to younger kids. Up until this point, Rhode Island Farm & Sea to School has focused on K-12. Rhode Island’s new body of work with the CDC funding provided the capacity and expertise needed to expand into early care and education settings. In addition to sharing strategies, we discuss ongoing activities, collaborate on improvements and hear directly from the community about their needs and ideas.
This momentum led Sarah to write a smaller grant using CDC Preventative Health and Health Services Block Grant funds to pilot what became the Little Harvest Produce Box. We partnered with Farm Fresh Rhode Island, SNAP-Ed at the University of Rhode Island and South Side Community Land Trust to get local produce into family child-care homes and centers.
So that’s the origin story—it’s been building piece by piece from that larger CDC grant.
