Engaging diverse community stakeholders to co‐create solutions in food deserts: A design‐thinking approach

• Author: Terri Wada,Stephanie A. Fernhaber,Shellye Suttles,Pamela Napier
• Date: 01 August 2019
• Published date: 01 August 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1874

ACADEMIC PAPER

Engaging diverse community stakeholders to co‐create

solutions in food deserts: A design‐thinking approach

Stephanie A. Fernhaber

1

|Terri Wada

2

|Pamela Napier

3

|Shellye Suttles

4

1

Lacy School of Business, Butler University,

Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

2

Collabo Creative LLC, Indianapolis, Indiana,

USA

3

Visual Communication Design Department,

Herron School of Art and Design, Indiana

University, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

4

Office of Public Health and Safety, City of

Indianapolis, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Correspondence

Stephanie A. Fernhaber, Butler University,

Lacy School of Business, 4600 Sunset Avenue,

Indianapolis, IN 46208.

Email: sfernhab@butler.edu

Most households in the United States, regardless of income, do the majority of their

grocery shopping at supermarkets. However, due to the consolidation of the

supermarket industry and some neighborhoods not being able to economically sustain

a supermarket, more and more households are struggling to conveniently access

affordable, healthy food choices. This article describes a participatory design process

used to engage a diverse set of stakeholders in the Indianapolis community to

cocreate solutions that improve access to healthy and affordable food. Indianapolis

offers an insightful context, given that it was recently ranked the worst city in the

United States for food deserts. Our results not only demonstrate the value of using

a design‐thinking approach in addressing food access issues but also offer unique

insight into the problem of food access itself.

1|INTRODUCTION

Approximately 24.6 million people in the United States struggle with

convenient access to healthy and affordable food (The Reinvestment

Fund, 2012). With the consolidation of the supermarket industry and

many low‐incomeneighborhoods notbeing able to economicallysustain

a supermarket, thiscreates a barrier that can lead to poor eatinghabits

and increasedhealth risks such as obesity and diet‐related disease (Bell,

Mora, Hagan, Rubin, & Karpyn, 2013; Canto, Brown, & Deller, 2014).

Yet identifying and implementing solutions are anything but

straightforward. Food access is a highly complex and interconnected

social issue that makes it difficult to understand the root causes. It also

involves a diverse set of stakeholders. In this paper, we argue for the

value of leveraging a design‐thinking approach in addressing complex

social issues such as food access. Social design or design for social

impact is an emerging field for both study and practice, as it brings

together the worlds of social change and design thinking in terms of

modeling for practice and theory, for brainstorming new ideas, and

for identifying design problems. Within this field, design processes,

skills, and philosophies are applied toward addressing societal chal-

lenges in order to improve the well‐being of greater communities.

To illustrate the appropriateness of a design‐thinking approach, this

paper describes the participatory design process used in Indianapolis

that brought together a diverse set of community stakeholders to cocre-

ate solutions that improved access to healthy and affordable food. Indi-

anapolis is of particular interest given that it was recently ranked by

Redfin Walk Score as the worst city in the United States for food deserts

(Klein, 2014). Coined the Indy Healthy Food Access Challenge, this

community engaged research was spearheaded by

communityINNOVATE in partnership with Collabo Creative, a people‐

centered service design firm in Indianapolis, and the City of Indianapolis.

We contribute to the existing literature in three ways. First, we

demonstrate the value of a design‐thinking approach for addressing

food access issues. There is a recognized need to focus on place when

deriving solutions to limited food access (Howerton, 2017) and

allowing low‐income communities to drive the direction of their food

systems (Ver Ploeg et al., 2009). Second, we provide new insight into

the issue of food access itself. The community and market‐based solu-

tions that came out of the process suggest the need for a holistic

approach (Sonnino, 2009). Third, our paper provides a template for

design‐thinking along with a set of learnings that can be used by other

communities to address food access issues.

2|BACKGROUND: FOOD ACCESS AND

SUPERMARKETS

2.1 |Supermarkets

As ingrained to our thinking and our retail infrastructure as it may

seem, the concept of a self‐service supermarket is less than a century

old. Piggly Wiggly, which was established in Memphis in 1916, is often

Received: 2 April 2018 Revised: 11 July 2018 Accepted: 27 September 2018

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1874

J Public Affairs. 2019;19:e1874.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1874

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of12