粮食不安全是一个影响12%美国人的公共卫生问题。生活在粮食不安全家庭中的个人更有可能遭受营养不良、肥胖和慢性疾病。粮食不安全与获取粮食的地理途径有限有关;然而,过去的研究使用了有限的访问措施,没有完全捕捉社区环境的细微差别。这项研究的目的是通过城市化水平探讨粮食不安全与地理粮食获取之间的关系。2018年在德克萨斯州中部发出的2-1-1电话被归类为食物需求与非食物需求。使用ArcGIS绘制了超市和便利店的地图。由于存在超市和便利店,地理食物通道得以操作:在邮政编码内;仅在相邻的邮政编码中;而不是位于或位于相邻的邮政编码中。描述性统计和二项逻辑回归用于检查地理访问和2-1-1食物调用之间的关联,按城市化水平分层。2018年发出的2-1-1电话中有11%(N=55,405)是关于食物需求的。结果表明,与那些在邮政编码内拥有超市的人相比,居住在邮政编码内的城市和农村地区的呼叫者仅在邻近邮政编码内拥有超市的呼叫者就食品需求提出要求的可能性更大。这些发现表明,地理上的粮食获取与粮食不安全有关,但是这种关系因城市而异。因此,需要在城市和农村地区制定缓解粮食不安全的计划。
Food insecurity is a public health issue that affects 12% of Americans. Individuals living in food insecure households are more likely to suffer from conditions such as undernutrition, obesity and chronic diseases. Food insecurity has been linked to limited geographic access to food; however, past studies have used limited measures of access which do not fully capture the nuances of community context. The purpose of this study was to explore the association between food insecurity and geographic food access by level of urbanicity. 2-1-1 calls made in 2018 in Central Texas were classified as food needs versus non-food needs. Supermarket and convenience stores were mapped using ArcGIS. Geographic food access was operationalized as the presence of supermarkets and convenience stores: within the zip code; only in neighboring zip codes; and not located within or in neighboring zip codes. Descriptive statistics and binomial logistic regression were used to examine associations between geographic access and 2-1-1 food calls, stratified by level of urbanicity. 11% of the 2-1-1 calls made in 2018 (N = 55,405) were regarding food needs. Results showed that peri-urban and rural callers living in zip codes that only had supermarkets in neighboring zip codes had greater odds of calling about food needs compared to those that had supermarkets within the zip code. These findings indicate that geographic food access is associated with food insecurity, but this relationship varies by urbanicity. Thus, the development of food insecurity mitigation programs in peri-urban and rural areas is needed.