Abstract
Household food security is influenced by the socio-political environment, resource access, and experiential factors, but the systemic interactions of these drivers are rarely considered in the same study. In collaboration with stakeholders, we built a system dynamics model to examine the drivers of food insecurity in Detroit and how community-led interventions could promote food security. We found that single interventions were not as effective as multiple interventions in combination, due to the complex limits on a households’ ability to purchase healthy foods. The iterative modeling process allowed stakeholders to jointly understand and generate insights into the cross-scale limits that households must navigate in order to achieve food security. Furthermore, our modeling effort demonstrates how time is a fundamental resource stock that limits the efficacy of behavioral and structural interventions.
Highlights
Recent food security literature has stressed the necessity of a systems approach to understanding the complex nature and interconnections between the food system and public health outcomes (Story, Hamm, & Wallinga, 2009)
Our model results document how specific limitations govern the dynamics of household food and nutritional security
The quantitative model allowed us to explore the experiential dimensions of food and nutritional security and test stakeholder assumptions of how various interventions should be structured and implemented
Summary
Recent food security literature has stressed the necessity of a systems approach to understanding the complex nature and interconnections between the food system and public health outcomes (Story, Hamm, & Wallinga, 2009). The food systems literature has come to be more integrated with the complex systems and socio-ecological resilience literature, at regional scales (Hodbod & Eakin, 2015; Lamine, 2015). This presents a potential framework for a better understanding of how social and ecological interactions produce different food security outcomes. This integration is still rare at the scale of an urban community, a setting in which many food security interventions are targeted
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