Focus Area: Food Access

Meaningful, Measurable, and Manageable Approaches to Evaluating Healthy Food Financing Initiatives: An Overview of Resources and Approaches

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Healthy food financing initiatives are a relatively new approach to improve access to healthy foods, enabling healthy food retailers to locate or renovate food outlets in underserved communities through one-time financing assistance. This paper provides guidance on using meaningful, measurable, and manageable methods to evaluate healthy food financing efforts. The authors outline a number of More

Validity of Secondary Retail Food Outlet Data: A Systematic Review

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To characterize retail food environments and identify areas with limited retail access, researchers, government programs, and community advocates have primarily used secondary retail food outlet data sources. This systematic review examines the evidence for validity reported for secondary retail food outlet data sources for characterizing retail food environments. A literature search was conducted through December More

Community-Based Interventions in Prepared-Food Sources: A Systematic Review

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Foods purchased from prepared food sources (ready-to-eat foods that can be eaten outside the home or brought back or delivered to the home to eat) are now a major part of the American diet and are linked to increased rates of overweight and chronic disease. Prepared food sources may be an important venue for obesity-prevention More

Investigating Nutrition Standards in Seven California Counties to Inform Policy at Local, State, and Federal Levels

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Establishing county-level food and beverage standards is a promising strategy for improving nutrition environments. This study will investigate the impact of nutrition standards policies on county facilities that serve foods and beverages to children from lower-income communities of color in California. The specific aims are to: 1) describe the process of developing, implementing, and monitoring More

A Model to Drive Research-Based Policy Change: Improving the Nutritional Quality of Emergency Food

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This article discusses the process a nonprofit policy advocacy organization (California Food Policy Advocates) and an academic research center (Center for Weight and Health at University of California, Berkeley) went through to develop policy and practice recommendations aimed at improving the nutritional quality of emergency foods. In February 2012, these two organizations convened a one-day More

Improving the Nutritional Quality of Emergency Food: A Study of Food Bank Organizational Culture, Capacity, and Practices

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This paper highlights the results of a national online survey of 137 U.S. food banks and qualitative interviews with senior staff at six California food banks in 2011 regarding the current state of food banks’ nutrition-related organizational culture, capacity, and practices. Researchers found that the majority of U.S. food banks reported having a substantial level More

Examining Contracts and Agreements Between Small-Scale Food Retailers and the Food Industry

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Small retail food stores are ubiquitous in lower-income, urban settings, and are a major food source among lower-income racial and ethnic minority children and adolescents. Little is known about the types of agreements (e.g., slotting fees, retail promotional programs, exclusive contracts) that small retail food stores may have with manufacturers and distributors of high-sugar, high-fat More

Economic and Community Development Outcomes of Healthy Food Retail

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New grocery stores, corner stores, farmers’ markets, and other food retailers can generate a significant economic stimulus for communities–especially communities of color and lower-income communities. This paper examines the connection between improved healthy food retail and resulting economic and community development. Several types of innovations in food retail, distribution, and production are examined, and select More