Barriers to Food Security and Community Stress in an Urban Food Desert

Jessica Crowe,Yolanda Columbus,Constance Lacy

doi:10.3390/urbansci2020046

Jessica Crowe, Yolanda Columbus + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci2020046

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Abstract

By analyzing data from focus groups in a poor, mostly African American neighborhood in a large U.S. city, we describe how residents in urban food deserts access food, the barriers they experience in accessing nutritious, affordable food, and how community food insecurity exacerbates prior social, built, and economic stressors. Provided the unwillingness of supermarkets and supercenters to locate to poor urban areas and the need for nutritious, affordable food, it may be more efficient and equitable for government programs to financially partner with ethnic markets and smaller locally-owned grocery stores to increase the distribution and marketing of healthy foods rather than to spend resources trying to entice a large supermarket to locate to the neighborhood. By focusing on improving the conditions of the neighborhood and making smaller grocery stores and markets more affordable and produce more attractive to residents, the social, built, and economic stressors experienced by residents will be reduced, thereby possibly improving overall mental and physical health.

Highlights

In a number of recent studies, researchers document that food insecurity and hunger are a substantial and persistent problem in the United States [1,2]
It is important to look at health from a holistic viewpoint. This includes the effect that stress has on residents’ physical and mental health and how food deserts exacerbate prior social and economic stressors. We address this gap in research by focusing on the following questions: (a) What are the barriers to accessing nutritious affordable food in an urban food desert? (b) How does community food insecurity exacerbate prior social, built, and economic stressors? By analyzing data from focus groups in a poor, mostly African American neighborhood in a large U.S city, we describe how residents in urban food deserts access food, the barriers they experience in accessing nutritious, affordable food, and how community food insecurity exacerbates prior social, built, and economic stressors
With respect to obtaining food, most participants shopped at grocery stores, sometimes residents shopped at convenience stores on an emergency basis

Summary

Introduction

In a number of recent studies, researchers document that food insecurity and hunger are a substantial and persistent problem in the United States [1,2]. In addition to household food insecurity, community food insecurity is prevalent in the United States, in the most rural and urban areas of the country. Over the past six decades, grocery retailers have abandoned the inner city for suburban and exurban locations, limiting food accessibility in urban neighborhoods. Retailers can build larger stores and large parking lots in the suburbs because there is more land available. These suburban locations are convenient to highways and access roads, making it easier to load and unload trucks [4]

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