Using Gis Technology On Healthy Food Accessibility

This perfectly relates to the obesity issue my group is addressing for our MAP-IT project. In Wyandotte County 23.9% of individuals live below the poverty line (Kansas Health Matters, 2017). When families live on low income they are sadly forced to make unhealthy choices because they are cheaper and readily accessible. As seen in the Unnatural Causes documentary (2008) just because someone wants to live a healthier lifestyle it sometimes isn’t easy to do. If individuals don’t have access to transportation or extra cash to spend on healthy food they can’t change their way of

Food deserts are places where healthy foods are not produced nor sold. Unfortunately, Chicago is filled with food deserts. Approximately 600,000 people reside in areas that consist of food deserts (Gallagher, 2006). Nearly 200,000 of those people are children. These children do not have the opportunity for healthier options, which shows an increase in obesity rates (News One Staff, 2011). There are 77 Chicago communities and out of that 77, 23 are food deserts (Gallagher, 2006). Chicagoans-particularly the black communities- are forced to live off the accessible food that is near them. The food deserts are in Austin, North Lawndale, Armour Square, Near South Side, Fuller Park, Grand Boulevard, Washington Park, Woodlawn, West Lawn, Chicago Lawn, Englewood, Ashburn,

In terms of governmental involvement in the management of food deserts, we argue that very little has been done legislatively by the Metro Nashville and Davidson county government. Despite the fact that several areas in the Davidson County have been identified as food deserts by the USDA, little to no legislation has been created to combat the problem and its effects on the health of its citizens. Edgehill has been put on the USDA map of food deserts, because it qualifies “as a “low-access community,” [where] at least 500 people and/or at least 33 percent of the census tract's population must reside more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (for rural census tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles)” (USDA). However, the

Introduction Dayton, Ohio has many current food issues. An especially large issue is food access. Low income families cannot provide food for their children on a regular basis. According to the USDA Food Access Atlas, Montgomery County has a large issue regarding food access. Much of the county is considered to have low income, the US Census Bureau states that 13.5% of the county’s population lives in poverty, so people are less able to provide themselves with food. Many people also have low access, so accessing food is difficult because in low income areas grocery stores and markets are scarce. The USDA Food Atlas states that 29.56% of the population in Montgomery county have low access to a store, which is 158,183.23 people (USDA Food

Diverse groups in American society are often the most marginalized and therefore the most vulnerable to issues that undermine the fair and uncomplicated pursuit of health and wellbeing. One of those issues is the lack of access to affordable healthy food and, in many cases, the inaccessibility to food in general. Areas where affordable and healthy foods are largely unavailable are called food deserts and the members of the diverse groups that live in such areas or that have access to very little food at all often develop a sense of food insecurity. One of the groups that is increasingly impacted by food deserts and food insecurity is the nation’s elderly population which is, by most standards, defined as those individuals aged 65 and older. The following paper investigates this phenomenon by addressing the elderly population of Ada County, Idaho as representative of this diverse and often disenfranchised population. The paper investigates the issue of food deserts and food insecurity that threaten the health and wellbeing of the elderly in the context of the various elements of social determinants of health that contribute to their development and persistence. The paper also includes proposals for individual and population-based strategies to improve access to healthy and affordable food by this population as well as improve the health and wellbeing of its members.

Obesity rates in the US are rising due to food insecurity. One in six people in the U.S. are food insecure, while two-thirds of adults and one-third Americans are overweight or obese.14 Studies have found that wealthy districts have three times as many supermarkets compared to the poor.15 Kevin Conocannon of the USDA noted in an interview that people in poorer areas sometimes have narrower variety of food options.16 SNAP recipients face barriers to achieving nutritious diets due to lack of availability in their neighborhood. Healthy food often comes with higher costs, so most people with lower income result to eating foods with lower cost and higher calories. According to a 2009 report by the USDA, as many as 23.5 million Americans live more than one mile from a supermarket with limited access to a vehicle.17 Food Deserts are particularly prevalent in low-income communities.18

“The food desert concept suggests that the absence of major food outlets in inner-city neighborhoods prohibits consumption of healthy food, thus highlighting geography as a key constraint in food access.” (Kato and McKinney 216) It is unfair that low-income families are targeted by food deserts but it is how society is formed. Most food markets are found located in low-income African American communities. This was the vocal research points in Naa Oyo Kwate’s “Fried chicken and fresh apples: Racial segregation as a fundamental cause of fast food density in black neighborhoods” “In the US, predominantly Black neighborhoods often embody the characteristics of food deserts, where ‘it is easier to get fried chicken than a fresh apple’.” (Kwate 34) The placement of fast food restaurants in comparison to healthy food places is unfair and forces low-income family to consume unhealthy foods. It essentially leads to shorter lives and less and less people in the lower social classes. It is almost as if the higher classes plot to make their money and kill off the low-end families. Kato and Kwate revealed the truth behind the locations of food deserts across the United States. Food deserts are more likely to be seen in black and minority

Research shows that government-sponsored programs aiming to expand access to healthy food options and reduce levels of obesity are ineffective. These policies emphasize accessibility in terms of location and proximity but fail to encourage consumption of healthy foods or reduce levels of obesity among low-income families (Copari, 2014). The analysis through policy lens illustrates the government's role and the inability to address the underlying causes of food deserts that result in the policies that disregard equity and focus on promoting equality. In this section, we discuss the government’s efforts to increase accessibility to healthy food options, the political implications of food desert policies, and the government’s efficacy to promote

The United States has struggled with the health of their population for decades. The fight has been against an ineffective health care system with rising rates of inactivity and obesity. These two states increase the likelihood of chronic diseases from occurring. There have been many debates in the political arena on how this issue needs to be addressed. In order for a solution to be effective, we must look upstream. We must look at why people are eating poorly and why people are more sedentary than decades before. I believe the main culprit is an access issue. If people are not provided basic necessities, such as healthy foods, then no policy will be beneficial. In this paper, I will be discussing the issue of food deserts in Nevada including

Poverty is an issue that can be discussed at great lengths, but the real challenge is finding effective ways to reduce or eradicate poverty. It is important to spend quality time developing approaches to the issue of poverty and how to alleviate it. Individuals living in poverty lead a life of limited opportunities and one of these limited opportunities is access to good quality healthy food. The American Nutrition Association considers this lack of access as a Food Desert defined as, “parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas” ("USDA Defines Food Deserts | American Nutrition Association," n.d.). One way in which American’s can work towards a future with less poverty and eventually one with little to no poverty would be to eliminate the existence of Food Deserts.

NYC department of health reports show that adult obesity rates in Flatlands and Canarsie are 32% while the rates in Brooklyn is 27% and the rates in NYC is 24%. The rate of obesity in Flatlands and Canarsie is four times the rate in Stuyvesant Town and Turtle Bay and is almost two times the rate in Midtown. Obesity-related health outcomes rates are also higher in Flatlands and Canarsie than others. The rates of stroke hospitalizations are 344 per 100,000 which is similar to the rates of Brooklyn and a little bit higher than NYC rates. Flatlands and Canarsie rank 9th in diabetes rates with 15% which is higher than Brooklyn and NYC rates and five times the rates of diabetes in Greenwich Village and Soho. There are some factors that might have an influence in making these high rates of obesity and obesity-related health problems among adults in Flatlands and Canarsie. Lack of access to healthy food, poverty, and barriers to physical activity are factors associated with individual-level obesity (Lim and Harris, 2015). High consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is highly associated with great risk of obesity (Ruff, 2014). A research by Kwate et al. (2009) showed that fast-food outlets are more prevalent in Black NYC neighborhoods than other neighborhoods. The same study also showed that fast-food outlets in

The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) atlas on food deserts shows that most food deserts in California are in highly rural (USDA, 2017). Northern California, the Mojave Desert, and the Imperial Valley all have a high prevalence of food deserts (USDA, 2017). A closer look at the map also shows a significant amount of food deserts in urban areas of highly populated cities. Large portions of neighborhoods in urban areas like Los Angeles, San Diego, and Sacramento are food deserts (USDA, 2017). In this section, we will discuss the socio-economic characteristics of the people living in both types of food

The k-function gives insight on the spatial dependence between the locations of fast-food restaurants and schools by comparing the calculated value to an expected value based on the premise of no spatial relationship between the two. This comparison was displayed on a graph showing the expected k-function value, the observed k-function value, and a 95% confidence interval. The observed value fell above both the expected k-function value and the upper boundary of the confidence

“Food Desert” refers to an area in a rural or even urban region with little or no access to big grocery stores that provides affordable and fresh food for people to have a healthy diet. These areas are mostly composed of low-income households who are often Hispanics and African-Americans (Ploeg and Breneman et al). They are often “trapped” in a geographical location where only small convenient stores, which do not have sufficient supply of all common, fresh and healthy food, are available. Currently, there are 13.6 Million Americans who have difficulties in accessing to super markets and large grocery stores. People living in such areas with limited access to grocery stores spend 19.5 minutes more to travel, comparing to the people living in non-food-desert areas (Ploeg and Breneman et al).

Bringing Healthy Food to Underserved Areas. Washington: Poverty & Race Research Action Council, 2010. ProQuest. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.