{"id":75535,"date":"2013-04-10T10:29:01","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T14:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=75535"},"modified":"2013-04-16T11:08:33","modified_gmt":"2013-04-16T15:08:33","slug":"uconn-study-of-food-insecurity-in-connecticut-is-new-tool-to-combat-hunger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/04\/uconn-study-of-food-insecurity-in-connecticut-is-new-tool-to-combat-hunger\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Study of Food Insecurity in Connecticut is New Tool to Combat Hunger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Connecticut residents generally have dependable access to food, but the picture is not all rosy.<\/p>\n

A recent U.S. Household Food Security study showed that about one in seven households in the state reported not having enough money to buy food they needed in 2011. And agriculture officials say that between 2008 and 2010, nearly 13 percent of Connecticut\u2019s residents lived in \u201cfood insecure\u201d households, while 38 percent of those residents lived in \u201chouseholds with very low food security.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new study by the University of Connecticut\u2019s Zwick Center for Food and Resource Policy and Department of Cooperative Extension, 2012 Community Food Security in Connecticut: An Evaluation and Ranking of 169 Towns<\/i><\/a>, evaluates the state\u2019s capacity to address food security challenges and provides a guide for policy makers on how to get food resources to the state\u2019s residents most at risk.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A town-by-town representation of the risk that a resident is food insecure.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The UConn study focuses on a town-level assessment of factors affecting the state\u2019s \u201cfood security<\/a>,\u201d a socioeconomic term that defines easy access to safe and healthy food.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough it is extremely difficult to pinpoint where food insecure households are located, one can look at certain variables such as location of food retailers, bus routes, and participation in public food assistance programs to draw comparisons on a town-by-town basis,\u201d says Jiff Martin, a sustainable food system associate with UConn\u2019s Cooperative Extension System and co-author of the study.<\/p>\n

Conducted by UConn researchers in cooperation with the Connecticut Food Policy Council, the study updates a previous UConn report in 2005 that was the first to examine community food security in the state. After seven years, the current report offers a new assessment of community food security that should be of interest to town planners, and civic, environmental, and public health authorities seeking to reduce disparities in access to healthy food across the state, say the study authors.<\/p>\n

John D. Frassinelli, chair of the Connecticut Food Policy Council, agrees: “This update to the 2005 study will be very useful for groups working on the ground, as they assess their progress and make decisions regarding resource allocations to have the most impact.”<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The study also evaluated the proximity of each town to food retail stores.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To define \u201ccommunity,\u201d the study adopted the boundaries of Connecticut\u2019s 169 towns and created three rankings to examine each community\u2019s food system: population at-risk for food security; retail food proximity; and public food assistance programs. Each ranking combines several variables into one discrete measure that is used to assess each town\u2019s capacity to provide its residents access to healthy food.<\/p>\n

For the first ranking \u2013 population at-risk \u2013 the measure includes a town\u2019s population mix using poverty and unemployment rates, and socioeconomic characteristics such as income, vehicle ownership, educational attainment, and number of children per household, to determine the likelihood that a town\u2019s residents might be food insecure.<\/p>\n

The food retail measure considers each town\u2019s proximity to food retail stores and the variety of food cost options these establishments make available to a town\u2019s population. Given residents\u2019 ability to shop for food in neighboring towns, this measure considered not just the closest food retailers, but all retail options within a 10-minute drive from a town\u2019s population center.<\/p>\n

\"Another<\/a>
Another measure looks at how well served residents are by public food assistance programs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The food assistance ranking measured how well a town\u2019s residents are being served through public food assistance programs, and whether public bus transportation is available to provide people access to food resources.<\/p>\n

To interpret the rankings, if a town is identified with a large population at-risk for food insecurity, for example, then it can examine how well it is providing for its residents through both access to food retailers and whether residents are being served through public food assistance services and public bus transportation.<\/p>\n

The study maps all of Connecticut\u2019s 169 towns to provide a visual picture of each town\u2019s performance. The maps will be useful for comparing needs and performance between towns, notes Adam Rabinowitz, senior researcher with UConn\u2019s Zwick Center for Food and Resource Policy and co-author of the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn all of the maps, there are some very apparent clusters of similar rankings throughout the state, but the maps also provide an easy identification of where neighboring towns rank starkly different,\u201d says Rabinowitz. \u201cThis is a great opportunity to start questioning why those differences exist in these adjacent areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given that Connecticut has towns with vastly different sizes, the study also created five categories of town size \u2013 based on population \u2013 and ranked towns within each category to compare towns of a similar size. Maps of the rankings based on town size categories are also available on the study\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The food retail measure considered not just the closest food retailers, but all retail options within a 10-minute drive from a town\u2019s population center.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The study should be of interest to town leaders, anti-hunger advocates, and community groups seeking to improve access to healthy food in Connecticut, notes Rabinowitz, adding that growing public interest in safe and healthy food is fertile ground for policy makers to focus attention on the goals of community food security.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope,\u201d Rabinowitz says, \u201cthat these results will be used to stimulate town-level discussion, and may even help prioritize further analysis and commitment to strategies that will strengthen community food security in Connecticut.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new study evaluates the state\u2019s capacity to address challenges in access to food. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":75608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[56],"class_list":["post-75535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 08:44:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75535"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75611,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75535\/revisions\/75611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/75608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75535"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=75535"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=75535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}