Finding Your Place: Using Activity Space Approaches in Food Environment Research

Abstract

Extensive resources have been invested into improving access to healthy foods in underserved communities across the United States. However, evidence for the mechanisms by which food environments affect health is inconclusive. This may be due, in part, to how the food environment is conventionally measured: as the area surrounding a person’s home. In reality, we know that people move through a variety of places in their daily lives, often traveling far beyond their residential neighborhoods. In contrast to conventional measurement approaches, activity space approaches capture all of the locations a person visits on a routine basis and provide a more comprehensive picture of the experienced environment. In this case study, we illustrate the degree to which food outlet accessibility differs when the experienced environment is defined as the residential neighborhood versus the activity space among low-income African American women in Atlanta, GA, USA. We explore four key decisions that need to be made when using an activity space approach in food environment research: how you will measure activity space, how you will define residential and activity space environments, how you will measure the retail food environment, and how you will define food access. We then describe the primary challenges encountered during data collection and analysis, including participant fatigue, privacy concerns, questionnaire administration, and secondary data quality. We conclude with recommendations for researchers interested in using activity space approaches in their work. The methods described are widely applicable to other settings, populations, environmental exposures, and health outcomes.

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