Document Type
Article
Abstract
Objective:
The objective of the current study was to determine if patients of a large health care system in Detroit who self-identify as food insecure live further away from healthy grocery stores compared with food secure patients. Second, we explored whether food insecurity and distance to healthy grocery stores are related to ecological measures of vehicle availability in the area of residence.
Design:
A secondary data analysis that uses baseline data from a pilot intervention/feasibility study.
Setting:
Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Participants:
Patients of Henry Ford Health System were screened for food insecurity to determine eligibility for a pilot intervention/feasibility study (i.e. Henry’s Groceries for Health), conducted through a collaboration with Gleaners Community Foodbank of Southeastern Michigan. Only patients residing in Detroit city limits (including Highland Park and Hamtramck) were included in the secondary analysis. Of the 1,100 patients included in the analysis, 336 (31 %) were food insecure.
Results:
After accounting for socio-demographic factors associated with food insecurity, we did not find evidence that food insecure patients lived further away from healthier grocery stores, nor was this modified by ecological measures of vehicle access. However, some neighbourhoods were identified as having a significantly higher risk of food insecurity.
Conclusions:
Food insecure patients in Detroit are perhaps limited by social and political determinants and not their immediate neighbourhood geography or physical access to healthy grocery stores. Future research should explore the complexity in linkages between household socio-economic factors, socio-cultural dynamics and the neighbourhood food environment.
Disciplines
Advertising and Promotion Management | Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics | Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations | Food Security | Food Studies | Health Policy | Public Policy | Urban Studies | Urban Studies and Planning
Recommended Citation
Santarossa, S., Hill, A. B., Sitarik, A., Mackenzie, T., Hawkins, S., Scher, K., . . . Joseph, C. (2021). Food insecurity in Detroit: Exploring the relationship between patient-reported food insecurity and proximity to healthful grocery stores. Public Health Nutrition, 25(4), 954 - 963. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1368980021003128
Included in
Advertising and Promotion Management Commons, Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations Commons, Food Security Commons, Food Studies Commons, Health Policy Commons, Public Policy Commons, Urban Studies Commons, Urban Studies and Planning Commons
Comments
© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), and indicate if changes were made (no changes were made).