A new initiative addresses food access and works to build a more equitable food system for the city’s northeast side.

Bloomington, Indiana-based Cook Medical is investing $2.5 million to build a grocery store in the Indianapolis neighborhood where it is planning to open a new manufacturing facility. The company plans to let two local residents own and operate the store once it opens next year.

The store will be at 38th Street and Sheridan Avenue, near to where several groceries have shut down leaving nearby neighborhoods with limited access to food options.

Food deserts exist across Indiana -- from large swaths of Gary to parts of Posey, Greene and Crawford counties farther south. And a new study from SAVI at IUPUI shows that more than a quarter of Black Hoosiers live in food deserts -- low-income areas without easy access to a supermarket.

In Indiana, hundreds of thousands of people lack easy access to grocery stores. Many more can't afford to buy healthy food, and that's a problem for anyone with diabetes.

The Healthy Harvest Market at Brookside is opening near East 10th and North Rural streets in a building that used to house Pogues Run Grocer.

Indianapolis is expanding a pilot program that increases food access by providing car-share rides. The Lyft Grocery Access Program will now be offered to near northwest side residents.

Polis Center researchers tracked food accessibility trends and found 10 percent more people live in a food desert than did in 2016.

The number of grocery stores in Indianapolis has increased in the past year, but so has the number of people living in food deserts, according to a new report from SAVI.

About one in every five Marion County residents live in a food desert -- an estimated 196,000 people in the county.