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Second, community initiatives such as farmers markets and mobile food vans can help fill the gap. First, she says, health care providers should not only talk with patients about what to eat but also recommend sources for healthy food in their neighborhoods. Until healthy food becomes more abundant in all poor neighborhoods, Bower has a few suggestions. Both poverty and race matter when it comes to having healthy food options. The study formed the basis of their recently published Preventive Medicine article and of Bower's dissertation.īower and her public health colleagues decided to look at both poverty and race within census areas, hypothesizing that well-documented racial health disparities could be owing to differences in physical and social environments, including access to healthy food. Add to that their reliance on public transportation, responsibility to care for and support their children, and their struggle to stay substance-free, and "even if they wanted to make healthy choices, their circumstances made it very difficult for them to do so."īower wanted to better understand the problem, so-as a part-time public health doctoral student and a full-time nursing faculty member-she dove into the data with colleagues Roland Thorpe Jr., Charles Rohde, and Darrell Gaskin from the Bloomberg School of Public Health. "These women were obese, with diabetes or hypertension at really young ages, in their 30s," says Bower, who noticed that the women lived in unsafe neighborhoods, often with no parks, gyms, or supermarkets, where the convenience stores sold junk food. She was surprised by how many young African-American women were at risk for cardiovascular disease. Thirteen years ago, as a new public health nurse in Baltimore, Bower worked for a housing program that served uninsured women as they recovered from substance abuse. When it comes to having healthy food options, says Bower, "the poverty level of a neighborhood certainly matters, but even beyond poverty, the racial composition matters." Bursting with junk-food options, these smaller establishments rarely offer the healthy whole-grain foods, dairy products, or fresh fruits and veggies that a supermarket would provide. When comparing communities with similar poverty rates, she discovered that black and Hispanic neighborhoods have fewer large supermarkets and more small grocery stores than their white counterparts. The link between poverty and food availability has been well-documented since the mid-1990s, but according to new research by Kelly Bower, an assistant professor at the School of Nursing, a neighborhood's income isn't the only barrier to obtaining healthy food.
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With few supermarkets or farmers markets, it's easier to find a Slurpee than a smoothie, cheaper to get the Big Mac meal than grab dinner at a salad bar. "Food deserts"-areas in which residents are hard-pressed to find affordable, healthy food-are part of the landscape of poor, urban neighborhoods across the United States.