Mattapan faces unique health issues. One coalition found unique solutions.

Mattapan is one of Boston’s most diverse neighborhoods. Filled with first-generation immigrants, about 90% of its residents are people of color. Mattapan is also a low-income neighborhood and faces significant health problems that other, more affluent parts of Boston don’t. 

Much of it comes down to diet. A recent study found that Mattapan has the city’s highest rate of obesity, and, overall, just 18% of high school students in low-income communities in Boston are eating the recommended minimum of fruits and vegetables.

A community-specific problem calls for a community-specific solution, and this week’s Joy Beat honoree is a group of problem-solvers from the community working for the community. The Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition goes out and asks residents what crucial issues they should take on — and then, they take them on. 

Executive Director Shavel’le Olivier joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to share the work the coalition has been doing for 18 years. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Arun Rath: As I mentioned, Mattapan residents face specific health issues. Talk about that in some more detail and why they’re so prevalent.

Shavel’le Olivier: Most definitely. One of the reasons why the health issues in Mattapan are so prevalent is [when we] think about how the Mattapan community came to be. Thinking long back ago, when the Mattapan community was mostly Jewish individuals, and so BBURG (Boston Banks Urban Renewal Group) happened and all of those things — “white flight” — and so, now, we have a group of 90% Black immigrants living now in the community of Mattapan.

There is a lot of institutional racism — yes, I’m going deep! — and it’s by design. Now we have a lot of fast food places. We have a lot of phone stores. We have a lot of hair stores. We have a lot of nail shops, and we have a lot of corner stores, as well.

All of those things are a recipe for our residents having more accessibility for those foods that are bad for them because they’re there; they’re cheap, and they’re affordable compared to healthy foods you would find at a farmers market or Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. Those insitutions, those grocery stores, are not as close to Mattapan residents.

You get all of that in there together, and then you’ll have a community that is suffering from high rates of chronic heart diseases and other diseases, such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes.

Rath: Wow, I mean, you just laid out a lot of the things that intersect in a lot of communities of color [that] I think, across the country, people have talked about for a long time now.

Taking us back to the founding of the coalition in 2006, what was going on then that motivated you and your colleagues to take this on? Because it’s a big thing.

Olivier: Yes. So, around that time, I was a teenager. Our organization was founded by Vivien Morris. She is a pediatric dietician by trade and lived in a community in Mattapan before a rezone to Hyde Park.

Because of her interest in obesity and the health of Black and brown individuals in general, she wanted to do something about that. She noticed the high rates of obesity in the community in Mattapan because of all of the things that I mentioned before. So her and her colleagues got together, and they wanted to collect information for residents about: What is it that they wanted to do to impact their health in a positive way?

After [Morris and her colleagues] got back the data and the information, they found that residents wanted more places to be physically active, and they wanted more places where they [could] get sources of healthy food that’s accessible and affordable.

So, they created the Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition back in 2006. Then, in 2007, it was decided that we would run the community’s first farmers market.

Rath: Talk about how things expanded from there, because that on its own — a farmers market — is huge, I think, to address the kind of things you’re talking about.

Olivier: Definitely. Because food is a source of energy, and you need food to live. That’s just how the body is designed.

So, right now, we are in our 18th season of the Mattapan Square Farmers Market. We are currently four months, from July through October. We serve between 200 to 400 people every Saturday at our farmers market.

But that’s not the only thing that we do. From our conversations with community residents about the things that they wanted to see to impact their lives, food access and nutrition education was one of those things, and physical activity.

And so, with our physical activity, we do have some fitness classes. Our young people are the ones that are leading bike rides. And then, we have some events that tie in physical activity and healthy eating.

In 2008, a funder wanted some young people to do a walk audit in the Mattapan community. We were able to go out and get some young people to do this walk audit. Those young people loved that activity so much that they wanted to stay and create their own group within the organization. They called themselves the “Vigorous Youth,” and that’s how our youth group got started in 2008, from young people wanting to stay, just based on that one activity that they did.

So now, we have our five focus areas of food access and nutrition education, physical activity, youth development, built environment — how can we utilize the spaces that we have for more healthy eating and physical activity? How can we utilize those green and blue spaces? — and our last focus area of community empowerment.

Our organization [was] started by a community resident. For a while, we were volunteer-based. Those who live in Mattapan and those in surrounding neighborhoods that have a similar makeup to Mattapan are also volunteering their time through those focus areas that I mentioned before and us trying to strengthen our advocacy arm so we can more formally support our residents in making the changes that they want to see when it comes to their own health.

Rath: That’s absolutely brilliant. I’m kind of floored to hear what amazing work you’re doing on so many levels. It’s all about changing health outcomes, so having been at this for a number of years now, you must have heard from people or seen people whose lives have been changed by this.

Olivier: Most definitely. And I would say, you know, when you are an organization or a nonprofit organization, you’re going out and you’re applying for grants. And then, in those grants, the funders want [to know]: How are you going to measure the success of what you do? They want the qualitative data, and they want the quantitative data.

As an organization, we are just trying to serve the people, right? The best form of information or data that I can collect is the conversations that you have with residents informally. You’re not trying to give them a survey or have them fill out a survey. This one person went to a cooking class, and now, on a scale of one to five, they know how to cook better, right?

It is those informal conversations that you’re having with residents, whether we’re having it at the farmers market and we’re just saying hello to each other and catching up on what has happened during the week, or we see them once a year at our annual Mattapan on Wheels event that our young people lead.

We see them, and we’re saying, “Hey, how’s your biking journey going? You started here with us, and now we see you here every year.” Every year, [they] come and support and learn a new bike route around the Mattapan community and how to get from point A to point B.

Those are the things that we’re not able to capture so eloquently when we’re sharing information [with] funders. But those are the things that make us feel like, “Hey, we actually made an impact.” Even if it’s just one person, and we sparked something — they don’t have to follow it — we sparked something, and we make them go, “Hmm... Maybe I will try this, or I can recommend this to my friend or my family.”

We really call that a success and that makes us very happy.