Where Are the Food Deserts? An Evaluation of Policy-Relevant Measures of Community Food Access in South Carolina

Liese, Angela D.; Hibbert, James; Ma, Xiaoguang; Bell, Bethany A.; Battersby, Sarah E.

doi:10.1080/19320248.2013.873009

Cited by 16 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 22 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Food access is a tract-level indication that at least 33% of the population, or 500 people, reside greater than 10 miles from a supermarket, supercenter, or large grocery store. The same or similar measures have been used in US health research including studies of food deserts 30 and shopping behavior depending on food accessibility. 31 Data were made available by the USDA-ERS.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Validation of a new continuous geographic isolation scale: A tool for rural health disparities research

Doogan

Roberts

Wewers

et al. 2018

Social Science & Medicine

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a new continuous measure for rural health disparities research that characterizes geographic areas according to a perspective of access to resources. We call the measure Isolation and anticipate it will be useful as an alternative to commonly used rural classification schemes (e.g., the Census Bureau's measure). Following the best known standards for measuring rurality, it captures the trade-off between access to resource-rich, high-population-density areas and the cost of travel to those areas; thus even intrinsically low-resource areas may have high access to nearby resources. Validity was tested with proxies such as distance to hospitals, physician availability, and access to high quality food. The Isolation scale demonstrated good construct validity (i.e., both convergent and criterion validity). Fit statistics indicated that, compared to other commonly-used urban/rural definitions, the Isolation scale was the best overall measure when predicting several proxies for rurality, even when categorized. We also show that the measure does a substantially better job at explaining national health outcome data at the state level. This new continuous Isolation scale shows considerable promise for improving our conceptualization, theorization, and measurement of the features of rurality that are pertinent to rural health disparities research, and can also be useful to policy makers who may find value in using isolation thresholds that are most relevant to their policy planning needs.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Validation of a new continuous geographic isolation scale: A tool for rural health disparities research

Doogan

Roberts

Wewers

et al. 2018

Social Science & Medicine

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Both CFA measures were replicated based on accurate ground-truthed data 14,16 instead of using the secondary commercial databases underlying the agency publications. 9,10 This was because the food environment data were more accurate 14,17 and collected closer in time (i.e.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in Food Environment Perceptions and Spatial Attributes of Food Shopping Between Residents of Low and High Food Access Areas

Sohi

Bell

Liu

et al. 2014

Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective To explore potential differences in food shopping behaviors and healthy food availability perceptions between residents living in areas with low and high food access. Design A cross-sectional telephone survey to assess food shopping behaviors and perceptions. Data from an eight-county food environment field census used to define the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) healthier food retail tract and USDA ERS (United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service) food desert measure. Participants 968 residents in eight South Carolina counties. Main Outcome Measures Residents’ food shopping behaviors and healthy food availability perceptions. Analysis Linear and logistic regression. Results Compared to residents in high food access areas, residents in low food access areas traveled further to their primary food store (USDA ERS: 8.8 vs. 7.1 miles, p=0.03; CDC: 9.2 vs. 6.1 miles, p<0.001), accumulated more total shopping miles per week; CDC 28.0 vs. 15.4 miles, p<0.001) and showed differences in perceived healthy food availability (p<0.001) and shopping access (p<0.001). Conclusions and Implications These findings lend support to ongoing community and policy interventions aimed at reducing food access disparities.

show abstract

“…Access consists of geographic and economic access to safe and culturally relevant foods [9]. Consequently, policies to reduce the prevalence of food insecurity within a community intervention, such as placement of grocery stores in communities with limited access to food, often exclusively focus on factors related to geographic food access [10][11][12][13][14]. Another strategy to reduce the prevalence of food insecurity with a community or policy intervention is by attempting to address economic food access through food assistance or produce incentive programs like Double Up Food Bucks [15][16][17][18].…”

Section: Introduction 1food Insecurity and Food Access As Public Health Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Multi-Pronged Evaluation of a Healthy Food Access Initiative in Central Texas: Study Design, Methods, and Baseline Findings of the FRESH-Austin Evaluation Study

Janda

Ranjit

Salvo

et al. 2021

IJERPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Food insecurity and limited healthy food access are complex public health issues and warrant multi-level evaluations. The purpose of this paper was to present the overall study design and baseline results of the multi-pronged evaluation of a healthy food access (i.e., Fresh for Less (FFL)) initiative in Central Texas. The 2018–2021 FRESH-Austin study was a natural experiment that utilized a cluster random sampling strategy to recruit three groups of participants (total n = 400): (1) customers at FFL assets, (2) residents that lived within 1.5 miles of an FFL asset, and (3) residents from a comparison community. Evaluation measures included annual cohort surveys, accelerometers and GPS devices, store-level audits, and built environment assessments. Data are being used to inform and validate an agent-based model (ABM) to predict food shopping and consumption behaviors. Sociodemographic factors and food shopping and consumption behaviors were similar across the three groups; however, customers recruited at FFL assets were lower income and had a higher prevalence of food insecurity. The baseline findings demonstrate the need for multi-level food access interventions, such as FFL, in low-income communities. In the future, ABM can be used as a cost-effective way to determine potential impacts of future large-scale food environment programs and policies.

show abstract

Where Are the Food Deserts? An Evaluation of Policy-Relevant Measures of Community Food Access in South Carolina

Cited by 16 publications

References 22 publications

Validation of a new continuous geographic isolation scale: A tool for rural health disparities research

Validation of a new continuous geographic isolation scale: A tool for rural health disparities research

Differences in Food Environment Perceptions and Spatial Attributes of Food Shopping Between Residents of Low and High Food Access Areas

A Multi-Pronged Evaluation of a Healthy Food Access Initiative in Central Texas: Study Design, Methods, and Baseline Findings of the FRESH-Austin Evaluation Study

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About