Fresh Produce
Heart-healthy fruits and vegetables rescued from food banks, grocery stores, and farmers markets. Will have beets, leafy greens, sweet potatoes, and more.
Heartbeat Boxes delivers rescued produce, recipe cards, and health information directly to families living in food deserts, one box at a time.
The Crisis
In South Los Angeles, a person can walk past three fast food restaurants and liquor stores before reaching the nearest fresh grocery store, if one exists at all. The USDA categorizes large parts of South LA as food deserts, areas where residents live more than a mile from the nearest source of fresh food. For many elderly and low-income families, a mile and a half might as well be a hundred.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for African Americans nationwide, but in South LA it is even worse. The heart disease death rate in Service Planning Area 6 is 133.9 per 100,000, significantly higher than the 105.7 countywide average. The cause is clear is higher chronic disease rates driven by a lack of healthy food options and a disproportionate number of liquor and fast food outlets.
African American men are 33% more likely and African American women are 32% more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than white Americans. For African American women under 65, that number more than doubles. Living in a food desert alone raises the risk of a heart attack by 44%. Race, gender, and geography combine to create a crisis that no single person can escape on their own.
Key Statistics
• 133.9 heart disease deaths per 100K in South LA vs. 105.7 countywide
• 33% higher cardiovascular mortality for African Americans
• 1 in 5 African Americans unaware they have high blood pressure
The worst part: one out of five African Americans with hypertension do not even know their blood pressure is high. They are walking around with a time bomb in their chest and nobody said a word. Meanwhile, only 29% of African American church leaders in South LA have actively addressed heart health in the past year.
The Solution
One box, one conversation, one family at a time
Heartbeat Boxes attacks the food desert crisis from the ground up. The project partners with a nonprofit that rescues fresh produce, and Baldwin Hills Baptist Church. A group of teen volunteers assembles and delivers 10 boxes per month directly to families.
Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that bringing health solutions into places people already trust, like barbershops, produced dramatically better results. Heartbeat Boxes follows the same principle by going through a church.
What is in the box
Recipe Cards
Simple, delicious recipes so families know exactly how to cook the food in ways they will love.
Health Information
Pamphlets with warning signs of heart disease, blood pressure guidelines, and where to get help locally.