Since we began reporting on nutrition in October, we've met scores of unlikely bedfellows, from health experts to community police, garden enthusiasts to apartment block neighbors, all working to reverse our community's staggering statistics on obesity and its co-morbid conditions.

But perhaps none have been more disparate than the ambitious collaborative brought together by a $75,000 nutrition grant awarded in Ashland and Cherryland this month.

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to authorize contracts with the Alameda County Deputy Sheriff's Activities League (DSAL),  the Mandela MarketPlace cooperative grocery store in Oakland and the Tuburcio Vasquez Health Center in Hayward to administer a grant from the Kresge Foundation that would bring fresh, community-grown produce to local families.

"I'm a longtime activist, and I never thought I'd be sitting on the same side of the table as the sheriff's department," said said Dana Harvey, who runs the Mandela MarketPlace and will act as an advisor to the Ashland-Cherryland project. "But they have a really amazing sheriff's department and I'm really exited to participate in the future of that neighborhood."

As we first reported back in October, San Lorenzo, Ashland and Cherryland have among the highest rates of nutrition-related morbidity in Alameda County: a surge in overweight children; stunning statistics on diabetes deaths, stroke and heart disease; and an overall obesity rate experts have said is nearly 25 percent greater than in the rest of the county.

At the time, officials told us much of the blame lay with access to affordable and nutritious foods, especially in Ashland and Cherryland where healthy produce can be virtually impossible to find.

"Obesity isn't just a result of individual choices," said Maria-Elena Young with the county department of public health. "It's a result of the environment where you're able to make those choices."

Split between Ashland-Cherryland and West Oakland, the Food to Families Initiative grant will bring Dig Deep Farms' produce into corner stores and fund "prescriptions" for pregnant women to attend cooking classes.

"(The) Initiative is designed to reduce disparities and improve health of low-income children and adults," said David D. Fukuzawa, director of the foundation's Health Program, in a press release. "Grantees will devote the next three years to developing new models of health-care delivery...in their communities."

Working in conjunction with Mandela, DSAL will send youth outreach workers to canvass the corner stores that dominate the area this spring, pinpointing spots where locals get most of their food.

"What the Food to Families project allows us to do is identify one vulnerable population and make the food connection," said Alameda County Sheriff's Sgt. Martin Neideffer, who heads up DSAL. 

Of the 20 businesses that sell food in the community, most are conveniences stores selling Budweiser and CornNuts. They're universally small, with an average of area of less than 2,000 square feet, and few sell fresh produce.

"It's taking corner stores that traditionally sell liquor and Cheetos and getting them to sell something that's really healthy," Young said.

By September, the Tuburcio Vasquez Health Center will begin writing prescriptions for that produce, as well as classes to teach pregnant mothers how to prepare it for their families.

"People are very excited to work with their local government to make positive change around health," Harvey said. "There is a real movement emerging in Ashland-Cherryland to build a greener, healthier and economically stronger community."