Growing disparities in an urban food desert: Downtown Albany longitudinal food environment studies

• Date: 01 August 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1851
• Published date: 01 August 2019

ACADEMIC PAPER

Growing disparities in an urban food desert: Downtown Albany

longitudinal food environment studies

Akiko S. Hosler

Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics,

University at Albany School of Public Health,

Albany, New York

Correspondence

Akiko S. Hosler, Department of Epidemiology

and Biostatistics, University at Albany Health

Sciences Campus, GEC 119, One University

Place, Rensselaer, NY 12144.

Email: ahosler@albany.edu

Funding information

New York State Department of Health, Grant/

Award Numbers: Maternal and Child Health

Block and 20090509; Research Foundation

for the State of New York (University at

Albany Faculty Research Awards Program A);

Centers for disease Control and Prevention,

Grant/Award Number: U48 CCU 220083

This paper presents findings from our longitudinal study of food environments in two

exemplary, contrasting urban neighborhoods in Downtown Albany, New York. The

“minority neighborhood”(74% racial/ethnic minority population) is a “food desert”

by the United States Department of Agriculture's definition, whereas the adjacent

“mixed neighborhood”(33% minority population) is not. The long‐term trend analysis

(1970–2018) of the macro‐level food environment found that although the minority

neighborhood lost all supermarkets and remains supermarket‐less since the late

1990s, the mixed neighborhood was able to retain several supermarkets and since

2008, it gained a new supermarket every 3–5 years. The medium‐term trend analysis

(2003–2015) of the micro‐level food environment revealed a more complex picture of

changing food environments. The total number of food stores in the minority neigh-

borhood increased in much greater rates than the mixed neighborhood in the 12‐year

period, and accordingly, the standardized availability measures for “any”fresh fruits

and fresh vegetables increased significantly in the minority neighborhood. The stan-

dardized availability measure for adequate (five or more) varieties of nutritionally

desirable fresh fruits and vegetables, however, did not increase in the minority neigh-

borhood. Because the mixed neighborhood saw steady increases in such measures,

disparities between the two neighborhoods grew incrementally and reached the

highest point (rate ratio of over 5.0) in 2015. In this paper, there are also sections

to provide historical and contextual background of our food environment research,

as well as discussion on intervention ideas to address the disparities in fresh produce

availability focusing on ethnic markets.

1|INTRODUCTION

It is widely believed that the term “food desert”was coined in the

United Kingdom, and it first appeared in a report submitted to the

local health department in Radlett, Hertfordshire, in 1995 (Beau-

mont, Lang, Leather, & Mucklow, 1995). It was soon pointed out,

however, that the notion of food desert was not empirically derived:

It was merely a metaphor to depict complex interlinkages between

increasing differential access to food retail provision, social exclu-

sion, poor dietary consequences, and health inequalities among the

urban poor (Wrigley, Warm, Margetts, & Whelan, 2002). In fact,

studies that systematically measured physical access to food sources

(i.e., walking distance to and density of stores stocking essential

foods) in low‐income neighborhoods in the United Kingdom did

not find evidence to support the food desert hypothesis, including

its impact on dietary behavior (Cummins & MacIntyre, 1999;

Donkin, Dowler, Stevenson, & Turner, 1999; Pearson, Russell,

Campbell, & Barker, 2005). This led to a call for more rigorous food

environment research, but skepticism that food deserts are

“factoids”lingered in the public health community in the United

Kingdom (Cummins & Macintyre, 2002).

By the late 1990s, American economists were well aware that

both urban and rural low‐income residents had reduced access to

nutritiously important foods and paid more for them than their mid-

dle‐class counterparts (Alwitt & Donley, 1997; Chung & Myers,

1999; Kaufman, 1999). The public health community, on the other

Received: 5 April 2018 Revised: 10 May 2018 Accepted: 11 July 2018

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1851

J Public Affairs. 2019;19:e1851.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1851

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of9