Community Commons is proud to be the home of Salud America! Growing Healthy Change; a site dedicated to empowering healthy community change for Latino children locally and across the nation.
Inspiring stories and innovative ideas continue to emerge from the Growing Healthy Change site and we are thrilled to be able to share one with you.
Farmers Market Opens in Houston Doctor’s Office
Primary care physician Dr. Ann Barnes often talked to her patients about the benefits of eating a healthy diet, but found many were unable to take her advice. High prices and no place to purchase fresh produce was the reality for a large number of people.
Dr. Barnes knew health was within the reach of her patients if they could just access it. In what she called “a moment of clarity,” she realized that opening a farmers market in the clinic was one solution to grow healthy change.
Healthy Harvest Farmers’ Markets have spread to five regular locations at Houston area clinics and may be a good solution for your community as well. Community Commons is proud to offer the following tools to help you explore this option for your city.
Tools to Help You Make Change
- Engaging stakeholders, such as farmers, physicians, and local businesses, is vital to planning and implementing an effective program. Learn from others that have been-there-done-that by reading Commons features Doctor’s Orders: An Apple A Day and Fresh Solutions to Food Access as well as Robert Ogilvie’s excellent Guest Voice on Giving Business the Incentive to Promote Healthy Lifestyles.
- Maps are an excellent way to show data in an engaging, easy to understand format. Use our Maps & Data page to explore data layers available to you or click on the map below to zoom to your city and see the data provided.

Modified Retail Food Environmental Index Score, DNPAO 2011 and Primary Care Physicians by location, CSM, 2012. Useful when looking at a physician prescription for healthy food program and how residents will access that healthy food. Click on the map to zoom to your area.
- Additional data is available to you when you click on a specific area within a map.

Additional attribute data is available for viewing when you click on a specific area within a map you are viewing.
- Indicator reports offer another opportunity to look at your region’s assets and disparities. Create a Community Health Needs Assessment report by first choosing the type of report you want to make and then simply enter your state and county (or several counties) and the data automatically populates for you.
- From there you can explore information such as demographics, social & economic factors, and health behaviors. The data and visual graphics are downloadable and can be put into your presentations or grant applications.
Become a Salud Hero yourself by joining the Growing Healthy Change group. This is why we created Community Commons — to help you use the latest technology and tools to make lasting change and share your stories and strategies so that we can collaborate, learn, and make change together.