CLOSING THE GAP

Sophia Easterling was curious about a bus parked across the street from the Mercy clinic, where she works, in Fergu son. Every day, the bus would pull up, park, and sit outside the clinic for stretches of time. Easterling, the clinic’s practice manager, crossed the street to check it out. The driver invited her aboard. What she saw surprised her.

The bus, an Operation Food Search MetroMarket, had been modified to function like a grocery store. The seats were gone. In their place were produce bins overflowing with leafy greens, root vegetables, and colorful fruit—and all of it was affordably priced. “The driver showed me around, and I went grocery shopping on this bus,” Easterling says.

The MetroMarket is addressing a real need in a community where some residents experience food insecurity and lack healthy options. Access to nutritious food is a social determinant of health, meaning that it affects health outcomes and risks. If you can’t get fresh produce, for example, then you’re less likely to have good nutrition, which, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, increases your risk of developing heart disease and diabetes. Recent research published in the American Journal of Public Health also suggests that there is a link between food insecurity and forgoing medical care because of cost.

If you’d like to add 10-15 years to your life expectancy, a balanced diet is one place to start and probably a health intervention that comes to mind pretty quickly. You might not think about your job, income, ability to build wealth, education, and access to the internet as health interventions—but they are. The problem? Not everyone in every neighborhood in St. Louis has the same opportunities to get a great job, access a business loan, or connect online.

So Easterling and Mercy saw an opportunity. Together with Operation Food Search and