Start Date: March 2013

ID #: 70754

Principal Investigator: Chen Zhen, MS, PhD

Organization: Research Triangle Institute

Funding Round: Round 7

See more related research

Share


Price incentives on healthy foods, price disincentives on unhealthy foods, and greater access to healthier foods have received much attention from policy-makers and researchers as potentially effective obesity policies. The aims of this study are to: 1) estimate models to quantify the own- and cross-price elasticities (i.e., sensitivity) of processed foods, fruits and vegetables, and fast-food demand by households with children; 2) develop new measures of healthy food access at the census tract level using GIS data on store locations and detailed scanner data on retailer-specific food sales, and evaluate the performance of the new measure in the context of the food demand model developed in Aim 1; and 3) expand the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) Food Pricing and Intake Simulator, an electronic toolkit for food pricing policy analyses developed by the study team with RWJF funding, to account for consumption of fruits and vegetables and fast foods and add new functional features to the toolkit. The updated toolkit will be able to simulate the dietary and fiscal impacts of food subsidies and taxes on overall nutrition and government revenue. This work will be conducted using data from children and adolescents ages 3 to 18 and their families who participated in Nielsen’s Homescan between 2004-2006, with a focus on lower-income and ethnic minorities.

Related Research

September 2025

Food Insecurity-Related Stigma Among Adults in the United States: A Scoping Review

This review aimed to characterize individual- and structural-level stigma associated with government (ie, SNAP, WIC) and emergency food program (ie, food banks, pantries, cupboards, soup kitchens) utilization in the US. 5 databases (PubMed, PsychINFO, Web of Science, CINAHL, Sociological Abstracts) were searched in June 2024. The review included peer-reviewed articles (January 2004 – June 2024), More

August 2025

Resources to Improve Implementation of the Healthy Eating Research (HER) Nutrition Guidelines for the Charitable Food System

This guide contains training materials, resources, tips, and examples of practices to help food banks improve the implementation of Healthy Eating Research (HER) Nutrition Guidelines for the Charitable Food System. To create this guide, the research team interviewed people working in food banks across the country to learn how they approach ranking foods using the More

August 2025

Diet Quality and Weight Status are Predicted by Federal Nutrition Assistance Program Participation, Health, and Demographics

This study investigated whether demographic, social, and economic determinants of health, including length of time participating in safety net programs, are associated with diet quality and weight status in early childhood. Using the WIC infant and toddler feeding practices study-2, classification and regression tree identified the sequence of binary splits that best differentiated the sample More