Change in Local Healthy Food Retail Environment through Interactions in Population Poverty, Race, and Nativity

David M. Wutchiett, Columbia University
Tanya Kaufman, Columbia University
Daniel Sheehan, Columbia University
Kathryn Neckerman, Columbia University
Kayip Kwan, Columbia University
Andrew Rundle, Columbia University
Stephen Mooney, Columbia University
Jeff Goldsmith, Columbia University
Gina Lovasi, Columbia University

Food environments have been linked to health outcomes including obesity rates, and may contribute to health disparities. Economic hardship within communities has been cross-sectionally associated with lower availability of healthy food retail outlets. In addition, residents’ race and nativity contribute to patterns of commercial investment and may modify the effects of economic hardship on the food environment. We propose longitudinal exploration of the relationship of population economic and demographic characteristics with changing availability of local healthy food outlets. We linked annual data (1990-2010) from a census of businesses across 23 New York City metropolitan area counties to census tract population demographic data. Because neighborhood characteristics are often collinear, main effects and interactions will be evaluated using lasso regression fit through cross-validation for variable subset selection. This approach will emphasize model interpretability and generalizability while analytically and visually examining local dynamics corresponding to changes in food environment.