The current public food assistance system in the United States depends primarily on provision of vouchers provided to families who cannot afford adequate food due to economic hardship that they can use in retail markets to purchase food. This system of food delivery does not equally ensure access for all in need due in part to the uneven distribution of food retailers and whether those retailers participate in food assistance programs. How to conceptualize, define, measure, and determine the importance of access to food retail for the nearly 50 million food insecure people in the U.S. remains a challenge.
This study uses a critical geographic information systems (GIS) approach to examine access to retailers that accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and WIC benefits for residents of rural Arizona. I seek to answer the question: How can critical GIS be used to better understand the relationship between access to food retailers, public nutrition assistance programs, and food shopping patterns in rural Arizona? This question is further refined by three sub-questions: What are the barriers to food access for recipients beyond physical access, and how can these be incorporated into measures of total accessibility? How can critical GIS be used to develop a better measure of overall access to food retail for nutrition assistance recipients in rural areas? How does accessibility of food retail affect recipients’ food shopping habits?
Through using a grounded mixed-methods approach, I hope to integrate quantitative measures of access derived from retailer locations and road networks with qualitative insight from participant interviews into individual intentions and lived experience using public assistance benefits to shop for food. An access map showing the relative accessibility of retailers accepting SNAP or WIC benefits will be compared and contrasted with individual experiences using SNAP or WIC benefits in rural communities. The results of this research will be disseminated on the web through an interactive access map and through research briefs to SNAP staff and educators across the state and rural community organizations.
Kara Haberstock Tanoue 