Growing disparities in an urban food desert: Downtown Albany longitudinal food environment studies

This paper presents findings from our longitudinal study of food environments in two exemplary, contrasting urban neighborhoods in Downtown Albany, New York. The minority neighborhood (74% racial/ethnic minority population) is a food desert by the United States Department of Agriculture's definition, whereas the adjacent mixed neighborhood (33% minority population) is not. The long-term trend analysis (1970-2018) of the macro-level food environment found that although the minority neighborhood lost all supermarkets and remains supermarket-less since the late 1990s, the mixed neighborhood was able to retain several supermarkets and since 2008, it gained a new supermarket every 3-5 years. The medium-term trend analysis (2003-2015) of the micro-level food environment revealed a more complex picture of changing food environments. The total number of food stores in the minority neighborhood increased in much greater rates than the mixed neighborhood in the 12-year period, and accordingly, the standardized availability measures for any fresh fruits and fresh vegetables increased significantly in the minority neighborhood. The standardized availability measure for adequate (five or more) varieties of nutritionally desirable fresh fruits and vegetables, however, did not increase in the minority neighborhood. Because the mixed neighborhood saw steady increases in such measures, disparities between the two neighborhoods grew incrementally and reached the highest point (rate ratio of over 5.0) in 2015. In this paper, there are also sections to provide historical and contextual background of our food environment research, as well as discussion on intervention ideas to address the disparities in fresh produce availability focusing on ethnic markets.