Research

The USDA defines food insecurity as a household level economic social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food. When measuring food access, the USDA uses Euclidean distances within census tracts from people to the nearest supermarket. In 2020, research was done by Hurst, Bibelnieks, and Walker to create a more realistic and complete understanding of food accessibility in Duluth, MN. Hurst et al. utilized qGIS to construct distances via roads rather than Euclidean distance, they narrowed the view of access to census blocks rather than tracts, and they developed a formula to weight distances to food retailers based on the socio-economic factors of household size, median household income, and percentage of households with vehicle access. In addition to addressing distance to food, Hurst et al developed a food retailer store value based on the price of particular goods as well as the overall variety of goods.

The research done by Hurst et al. expanded the picture of food access in Duluth, MN but left some further research to be done that is in part addressed by the current research. One key area of further research presented here is the characterization of food retailers by not only variety and price of some food items, but also nutritional value. A second area of research presented more fully investigates how factors of income, vehicle access, food retailer distances, and distance to healthy food differ across block groups found to be “low access”. The research presented in this paper takes two complementary approaches in characterizing food retailers based on variety and healthfulness of foods. Healthy Food Priority Areas (HFPAs) are identified and mapped in Duluth, MN based upon factors of poverty (household income adjusted for household size in relation to federal poverty guidelines), percent of households with vehicle access, road-network distance to the nearest full grocery store, and distance to food retailers with low healthy food availability. Also researched as a case study is Census Tract 156 - Lincoln Park. Lincoln Park is classified as a Healthy Food Priority Area in Duluth. The case study research further investigates the priority factor of vehicle access by considering distances and times to healthy and unhealthy food retailers via public transit as well as looks at how the placement of a community market could affect change in the access to healthy food with potential to create positive changes to health outcomes for residents of Lincoln Park.