Rural-Urban Differences in Food-Store Access and Food Security

This study will inform rural community members and policy makers about access to food supply and food security that can help guide the development and implementation of relevant interventions.

The proposed work has three aims:

1. Quantify differences in food store access and food insecurity between rural and urban residents
2. Identify which rural and urban residents (per sociodemographic characteristics) are most at risk for experiencing poor food store access and food insecurity
3. Evaluate the association between food store access and food insecurity in rural and urban communities

This project includes two different ecological analyses: food store access will be analyzed at the census tract level while food insecurity will be conducted at the county level. We chose to use different geographic units as census tracts are more appropriate for measuring food store access. This project will use 2023 data from four publicly available sources: USDA Historical Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) retailer locator data, American Community Survey (ACS) Census Tract and county-level Population data, Map the Meal Gap data from Feeding America, and ACS County-level vehicle ownership data.