3630 Watt Way, Los Angeles, CA 90089

http://festivalofbooks.usc.edu #bookfest
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Los Angeles has a well-earned reputation as a foodie’s paradise, where colliding cultures provide every type of food and flavor in strip malls and on wheels as well as traditional eateries and exclusive restaurants. But there is a major gap between those who eat well and those who go hungry, and this panel of experts and organizers will dissect the problem and discuss steps to address it.  

PANELISTS

Kris Coombs is in his fifth year of a JD/PhD degree program in Political Science and International Relations at USC. He has been working on issues of food insecurity at USC since fall 2015 by conducting surveys, coordinating food drives, working with administrators, and assisting with the development of the Trojan Food Pantry that opened in 2018.

LaVonna Blair Lewis is a teaching professor of Public Policy and the Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. Lewis’s work on cultural competency and health equity has appeared in the American Journal of Public Health, Society and Medicine, Family and Community Health, the Journal of General Internal Medicine, and other health management and policy journals.

Sarah Portnoy is an associate professor in the Departments of Iberian and Latin American Studies and American Studies and Ethnicity at USC, where she conducts research and teaches about food culture and food justice in Los Angeles’s Latino communities. She also teaches a yearly course in Oaxaca, Mexico, on food culture, street art, and traditional medicine. Her 2016 book, Food, Health and Culture in Latino Los Angeles, has received recognition for its contribution to furthering the field of food justice.

Breanna Hawkins (moderator) is a PhD student in Urban Planning and Development at USC with research interests in the network and spatial dimensions of urban food movement. The native Angeleno, who loves exploring new ways to leverage food as a vehicle for transformative social change in her hometown, who is also the executive director for the Los Angeles Food Policy Council (LAFPC), which works to ensure food is healthy, affordable, fair, and sustainable for all.

Event Details

  • Kian Ghodoussi
  • John Cagney

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