This session establishes food not as a matter of access or charity, but as a renewable economic engine, and it starts with the problem framed as an economic liability. Dallas has a measurable gap between its food environment and its public health outcomes, and that gap carries a cost that shows up in healthcare expenditure, workforce productivity, and concentrated economic fragility in neighborhoods the city needs as engines of growth. The Collaborative's work is the infrastructure build that makes capital flow possible: the policy architecture, cross-sector alignment, and shared evidentiary framework a city requires before investments compound rather than land as one-offs. That foundation is now in place. Dallas isn't starting a conversation. It's converting years of groundwork into deployable leverage.