Abstract
Measuring Food Access in Urban Areas
Kathryn M. Neckerman, Michael Bader, Marnie Purciel, and Paulette Yousefzadeh, Columbia University
Description
Motivated by concern about growing obesity rates, researchers have begun to map the neighborhood “food environment” and examine its association with the risk of overweight or obesity. Over the last 15 years, a number of studies have constructed measures of the food environment, most often using geographic information systems (GIS) methods and spatially referenced data to measure the number or density of food outlets within a given neighborhood. These GIS measures are attractive to researchers because they are precise and objective and can readily be constructed for large geographic areas. As in the neighborhood effects literature more generally, however, these food environment measures should not be adopted without careful thought about conceptual and measurement issues. This paper will provide a conceptual and methodological review of approaches to characterizing the food environment in urban areas; use an extensive collection of spatial data to characterize the food environment in New York City; and, using this case study from New York City, discuss how analysis of the food environment can inform discussion of food-related policy.
