Communities and Healthy Food: An initial review of availability and access

The impact of where you live on your ability to access healthy food has become a leading research topic. Numerous studies over the past 10 years have shown links between neighborhood placement, ethnicity and socioeconomic status to food security, food quality and resident’s health status. Other studies have attempted to define and codify the term “food desert” in rural, suburban and urban settings.

While examining the effect of social determinants within neighborhoods in Tampa, grocery store placement (healthy food store) surfaced as a needed area of study.  Data about healthy food stores (HF), fast food stores (FF) and convenience stores (CF) was collected in 25 zip code areas along with ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES).

An interesting, but not unexpected pattern began to emerge during the study. Healthy food stores were more numerous and more accessible (in terms of distance from the neighborhood) in higher socioeconomic and predominately European-American (white) zip codes than in African-American and Latino-American and/or lower socioeconomic zip codes.  Distance to an HF was tripled in some zip codes with low socioeconomic status and majority percentage of minority residents.  This is a significant finding because Tampa, similar to much of Florida, lacks a well-planned, well-connected transportation system with multiple transportation options.

One intriguing result from the study was the discovery that there were just as many fast food stores within high SES, white communities as there were in the low SES, minority communities.  Next steps will include studying utilization rates of those FF’s in each zip code