For many, navigating how to lead a healthy life can be challenging.

After numerous recalls — plus recent reports of black mold, leaky ceilings and flies at a Boar’s Head plant that led to a deadly listeria outbreak — some people are rethinking where they get their food.

Efforts to encourage local food sourcing are creating broader opportunities to address health equity.

Weslynne Ashton is the co-director of the Food Systems Action Lab at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She said the pandemic highlighted the ways local food suppliers can integrate with the community.

“The pandemic kind of opened up this box to say there are these local producers who are in the business of growing food, not just for a profit,” Ashton said. “I mean, everybody wants to be able to support their families, but also to feed their communities. So there has now been an infusion of more investment by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, by the Illinois state Department of Agriculture, into local food and really supporting our local farmers … to help them grow their businesses.”

And although many see things like farmers markets as expensive and inaccessible, finding locations that accept benefits such as SNAP is creating new accessibility.

Rukiya Curvey Johnson is the vice president of community health equity and engagement at Rush University Medical Center. The new initiative “Who Gets the Chance to be Healthy?” aims to address the barriers to healthier outcomes. One topic is tackling food insecurity.

“If we find that they are food insecure, they are given a prescription to our Veggie Rx pantry under our Food is Medicine program,” Curvey Johnson said. “So they’re able to get a prescription for healthy produce, proteins and shelf-stable food, and then we also connect them with a community health worker who can follow up with them, who can also work to connect them to benefits.”

Johnson added that going out and speaking directly with Chicagoans about their questions can make positive change.