Saint Joseph's University and UpLift Solutions Announce Food Desert Partnership

Consumers, community leaders and organizations will benefit from a new partnership between Saint Joseph's University's Haub School of Business and UpLift Solutions that aims to alleviate "food deserts" in urban areas. Defined as socially or economically distressed communities whose populations don't have access to nutritional food and non-food products, food deserts are in need of the services offered by large, full-scale supermarkets.

"We are pleased to partner with Saint Joseph's University and leverage their food marketing program to provide research and help educate and train the next generation of leaders to bring full service supermarkets to food deserts," says Jeffrey Brown, founder and chairman of UpLift Solutions, a non-profit founded in 2008 to enable organizations to respond to a population's specific needs and implement profitable supermarkets in low-income communities.

Robert Higgins, executive director of Saint Joseph's Academy for Food Marketing, says the University is proud to partner with UpLift Solutions, an organization he describes as "sharing the University's mission to promote justice and compassion for the poor and those in need."