Healthy food and
care for every
neighborhood.
Sweet Balance & CareLink — a scalable community health model addressing food deserts and care deserts together.
Americans in food deserts
Birmingham's population affected
Unpaid caregiving annually
Life expectancy gap
Two crises. Same communities.
Food Deserts
No grocery store. No healthy options.
Low-income areas more than one mile from a full-service supermarket. Residents rely on corner stores and fast food, driving higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, and early death.
Care Deserts
Caregiving alone, without support.
Unpaid family caregivers — mostly women and people of color — provide $470 billion in care annually with no training, relief, or recognition. Burnout is epidemic.
Communities in crisis.
Birmingham, Alabama
The highest food desert concentration of any major U.S. city. Predominantly Black communities on the south and west sides have gone decades without a full-service grocery store.
Chicago, Illinois
The South and West Sides have seen half their grocery stores close over the past 20 years, leaving entire ZIP codes without fresh food while surrounded by the wealthiest neighborhoods in the Midwest.
Detroit, Michigan
Decades of disinvestment created severe food insecurity in a city once known for manufacturing wealth. Urban agriculture initiatives have helped but cannot replace the infrastructure that was lost.
Fresno, California
Surrounded by some of the most productive farmland in the world, Fresno's urban core suffers extreme food insecurity. Agricultural workers who grow the nation's produce cannot afford to eat it.
Nicole Bjornsen
Nicole founded Sweet Balance & CareLink while caring for her grandmother from Ukraine — managing her diabetes while honoring her cultural food traditions. That experience made visible what millions of caregivers face: invisible labor, no support, and a health system that ignores cultural context entirely.
Today she is building a replicable national model combining culturally grounded health education, peer caregiver networks, and policy advocacy to transform communities facing food and care deserts.
Read about the modelCulturally tailored.
One-for-one model.
Each Sweet Balance kit contains glucose tracking tools, low-sugar recipes adapted for the community's food traditions, and educational materials in the family's language. Every kit purchased funds a free kit for a low-income senior.
Distributed through partner clinics, senior centers, and faith communities — reaching the people who need it most.
Explore the kits
Three pillars.
One integrated approach.
Culturally Familiar Education
Health literacy programs built around the foods families already know and love — not generic advice that ignores culture.
Caregiver Networks
Peer networks that connect family caregivers with resources, training, and the relief they need to avoid burnout.
Policy Advocacy
Living wages for community health workers. Tax credits for family caregivers. Systemic change, not charity.
USDA Food Access Research Atlas
The pink areas show where 19 million Americans live without access to fresh food.
@sweetbalancelink
There’s a role for you in this work.
Policymakers, healthcare providers, researchers, community members — join us in building healthier neighborhoods.