COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Jennifer Quinlan

TITLE: ASSESSING RURAL FOOD ACCESS IN SOUTHEAST TEXAS USING THE NUTRITION ENVIRONMENT MEASURES SURVEY

ABSTRACT: Food insecurity remains a significant public health concern in the United States, with Texas reporting one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the nation. Residents of rural low-income and low-access (LI/LA) communities often face additional structural barriers to obtaining healthy foods, including limited transportation options and reduced access to supermarkets. The Nutrition Environment Measures Survey for Corner Stores (NEMS-CS) is a validated instrument that has  been widely used to evaluate healthy food access in urban food retail environments over the past two decades. Limited research, however has examined food environments within rural LI/LA communities using this instrument. This study sought to compare small food retailers located in rural (51) and urban (51) LI/LA census tracts. The NEMS-CS Scoring Tool provides an overall score for each store (0-61) as well as a food availability score (0-30), quality score (0-6), and pricing score (-9 to 18). A cross-sectional environmental assessment was conducted among 102 small food retailers distributed equally between rural and urban LI/LA communities. Census tracts were identified using the USDA Food Access Research Atlas then store locations identified using GPS and ground-truthing. Descriptive statistics and comparative analyses were employed to evaluate differences between rural and urban stores, between different types of stores (Dollar stores, independent mini markets and gas stations) as well as between the 10 rural counties visited, based on store scores. Findings indicated that overall, NEMS-CS scores were low across both settings but no statistically significant differences were seen between them. Overall scores were 12.2 and 11.4 out of 61 possible points for urban and rural stores, respectively. Availability scores were 10.7 and 10.2 (out of 30) for urban and rural stores, respectively, and quality scores were 1.9 and 1.3 (out of 6) for urban and rural stores, respectively. Price scores remained extremely low for urban and rural. Overall these results indicate that in Southeast Texas poor access to high quality food is persistent and similar in both rural and urban areas of LI/LA.

Keywords: Food insecurity, food access, rural communities, urban communities, low-income low-access, nutrition environment, Southeast Texas, NEMS-CS, corner stores.

Room Location: Agriculture-Business Bldg. Room 410