Document Type

Report

Publication Date

2018

Keywords

Washington County; Arkansas; Food security; Nutrition; Health

Abstract

Having previously implemented and executed two comprehensive surveys examining food insecurity, nutrition, and health among Fayetteville intermediate students attending Owl Creek (Fitzpatrick et al. 2009), and Springdale high school students (Fitzpatrick et al. 2015), the current work examined food insecurity at several levels of aggregation in Washington County. The first part of the project entailed cataloging the 32 census tracts in Washington County based on their risk for being food insecure. A food insecurity risk scale was created using 16 social, economic, demographic, and housing variables that all have been associated with food insecurity, poverty, and social risk at the community level. A single, valid and reliable risk index was created and of the 32 census tracts in Washington County, ten were categorized as high-risk; census tracts that were likely to contain high levels of food insecurity. A map was generated for Washington County that indicated three types of census tracts, those that were at high risk (red), moderate risk (yellow) and low risk (green). The focus for the rest of our work was on the high-risk census tracts.

After identifying the high-risk census tracts, a trained research corps was deployed to carefully and systematically catalog the built environment in these census tracts with a particular eye toward noting specific places in these census tracts that either served as catalysts or impediments to developing neighborhood food distribution centers; neighborhood food hubs. Researchers drove and walked through these census tracts taking careful notes, pictures, with the goal to identify specific areas that would be ideal for creating a neighborhood food hub.

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