Identifying Neighborhoods at Potential Risk of Food Insecurity in Rural British Columbia
Authors: Amirmohsen Behjat, Aleck Ostry, Christina Miewald, Bernie Pauly
Abstract:
Substantial research has indicated that socioeconomic and demographic characteristics’ of neighborhoods are strong determinants of food security. The aim of this study was to develop a Food Insecurity Neighborhood Index (FINI) based on the associated socioeconomic and demographic variables to identify the areas at potential risk of food insecurity in rural British Columbia (BC). Principle Component Analysis (PCA) technique was used to calculate the FINI for each rural Dissemination Area (DA) using the food security determinant variables from Canadian Census data. Using ArcGIS, the neighborhoods with the top quartile FINI values were classified as food insecure. The results of this study indicated that the most food insecure neighborhood with the highest FINI value of 99.1 was in the Bulkley-Nechako (central BC) area whereas the lowest FINI with the value of 2.97 was for a rural neighborhood in the Cowichan Valley area. In total, 98.049 (19%) of the rural population of British Columbians reside in high food insecure areas. Moreover, the distribution of food insecure neighborhoods was found to be strongly dependent on the degree of rurality in BC. In conclusion, the cluster of food insecure neighbourhoods was more pronounced in Central Coast, Mount Wadington, Peace River, Kootenay Boundary, and the Alberni-Clayoqout Regional Districts.
Keywords: Neighbourhood food insecurity index, socioeconomic and demographic determinants, principal component analysis, Canada Census, ArcGIS.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2021905
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 902References:
[1] Thomas, H. (Ed). (2006). Trade Reforms and Food Security. FAO. Retrieved from ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/009/a0581e/a0581e00.pdf
[2] Friendly, A. (2008). Towards food security policy for Canada's social housing sector. Canadian Policy Research Networks.
[3] Anderson, S. A. (1990). Core indicators of nutritional state for difficult-to-sample populations. The Journal of Nutrition, 120(11), 1557-1599.
[4] Rideout, K., & Kosatsky, T. (2014). Food insecurity: A public health issue for BC.
[5] Tarasuk, V, Mitchell, A, Dachner, N. (2014). Household food insecurity in Canada, 2012. Toronto: Research to identify policy options to reduce food insecurity (PROOF). Retrieved from http://nutritionalsciences.lamp.utoronto.ca/
[6] Polson, N. (2013). Food deserts in our midst. Courier - Islander. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1288153692?accountid=14846
[7] Vancouver Coastal Health. (2016). Food insecurity in British Columbia. Retrieved from http://www.vch.ca/about-us/news/food-insecurity-in-british-columbia
[8] Li, N., Dachner, N., & Tarasuk, V. (2016). Priority Health Equity Indicators for British Columbia: Household Food Insecurity Indicator Executive Summary. Provincial Health Services Authority.
[9] Gantner, L. A., Olson, C. M., Frongillo, E. A., & Wells, N. M. (2011). Prevalence of nontraditional food stores and distance to healthy foods in a rural food environment. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 6(3), 279-293.
[10] Glanz, K., Sallis, J. F., Saelens, B. E., & Frank, L. D. (2005). Healthy nutrition environments: concepts and measures. American Journal of Health Promotion, 19(5), 330-333.
[11] Asenso-Okyere, W. K., Benneh, G., & Tims, W. (Eds.). (1997). Sustainable food security in West Africa. Springer US.
[12] Feleke, S. T., Kilmer, R. L., & Gladwin, C. H. (2005). Determinants of food security in Southern Ethiopia at the household level. Agricultural Economics, 33(3), 351-363.
[13] Upton, J. B., Cissé, J. D., & Barrett, C. B. (2016). Food security as resilience: reconciling definition and measurement. Agricultural Economics, 47(S1), 135-147.
[14] Liese, A. D., Hibbert, J. D., Ma, X., Bell, B. A., & Battersby, S. E. (2014). Who lives in a food desert? A comparison of policy-relevant measures of community food access. International Journal of Health Geographic,s In Press.
[15] Richards, K. (2012). As the Crow Flies: An Underrepresentation of Food Deserts in the Rural Appalachian Mountains (Doctoral Dissertation, East State Tennessee University). Retrieved from http://dc.etsu.edu/etd/index.6.html
[16] Sisiopiku, V. P., & Barbour, N. (2014). Use of GIS Spatial Analysis to Identify Food Deserts in the State of Alabama. Athens Journal of Health, 1(2), 91-103.
[17] Apparicio, P., Cloutier, M. S., & Shearmur, R. (2007). The case of Montreal's missing food deserts: evaluation of accessibility to food supermarkets. aInternational journal of health geographics, 6(1), 4.
[18] Beaulac, J., Kristjansson, E., & Cummins, S. (2009). Peer Reviewed: A Systematic Review of Food Deserts, 1966-2007. Preventing chronic disease, 6(3).
[19] Gould, A. C., Apparicio, P., & Cloutier, M. S. (2012). Classifying Neighbourhoods by Level of Access to Stores Selling Fresh Fruit and Vegetables and Groceries: Identifying Problematic Areas in the City of Gatineau, Quebec. Can J Public Health, 103(6), e433-e437.
[20] Smith, D. M., Cummins, S., Taylor, M., Dawson, J., Marshall, D., Sparks, L., & Anderson, A. S. (2010). Neighbourhood food environment and area deprivation: spatial accessibility to grocery stores selling fresh fruit and vegetables in urban and rural settings. International journal of epidemiology, 39(1), 277-284.
[21] Jiao, J., Moudon, A. V., Ulmer, J., Hurvitz, P. M., & Drewnowski, A. (2012). How to identify food deserts: measuring physical and economic access to supermarkets in King County, Washington. American journal of public health, 102(10), e32-e39.
[22] Morris, K. D. (2014). An Analysis of the Relationship Between Food Deserts and Obesity Rates in the United States. The Georgetown Public Policy Review, 65-91. Retrieved from http://gppreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Morris.pdf
[23] Hubley, T. A. (2011). Assessing the proximity of healthy food options and food deserts in a rural area in Maine. Applied Geography, 31(4), 1224-1231.
[24] Sharkey, J. R., Horel, S., & Dean, W. R. (2010). Neighborhood deprivation, vehicle ownership, and potential spatial access to a variety of fruits and vegetables in a large rural area in Texas. International Journal of Health Geographics, 9(1), 1.
[25] Gustafson, A. A., Lewis, S., Wilson, C., & Jilcott-Pitts, S. (2012). Validation of food store environment secondary data source and the role of neighborhood deprivation in Appalachia, Kentucky. BMC public health, 12(1), 688.
[26] Sadler, R., Kulon, S., & Gilliland, J. (2012). Mapping Opportunities for Healthy Eating and Healthy Physical Activity in Grey-Bruce, Ontario, Grey Bruce Health Unit. Retrieved from http://www.publichealthgreybruce.on.ca/Healthy_Communities/GreyBruce_GIS_Report_Final.pdf
[27] Krishnan, V. (2010). Constructing an area-based socioeconomic index: A principal components analysis approach. Edmonton, Alberta: Early Child Development Mapping Project.
[28] Arai, S., & Burke, R. (2007). A Legacy of Poverty? Addressing Cycles of Poverty and the Impact on Child Health in Niagara Region. Retrieved from https://www.niagararegion.ca/social-services/legacy-of-poverty.aspx
[29] Cooper, M. (2006). Vulnerable youth in Calgary: Environmental scan. Retrieved from http://www.calgaryunitedway.org/main/sites/default/files/Calgary%20Vulnerable%20Youth%20Scan%20July2006.pdf
[30] O’Donnell, V., & Wallace, S. (2011). First Nations, Métis and Inuit women. Statistics Canada. Women in Canada: a gender-based statistical report. 6th ed. Ottawa: Statistics Canada.
[31] Sadler, R. C., Gilliland, J. A., & Arku, G. (2011). An application of the edge effect in measuring accessibility to multiple food retailer types in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. International journal of health geographics, 10(1), 34.
[32] Statistics Canada. (2006). Geographic Attribute File, Reference Guide, 2006 Census. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 92-151-GIE.
[33] Nix, S. (2008). Travel demand modelling and the modifiable areal unit problem. In Forthcoming in Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting ofthe Canadian Transportation Research Forum, Fredericton, New Brunswick.
[34] Wang, F. (2014). Quantitative Methods and Socio-Economic Applications in GIS. Crc Press.
[35] Prouse, V., Ramos, H., Grant, J. L., & Radice, M. (2014). How and when Scale Matters: The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem and Income Inequality in Halifax. Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 23(1), 61-82.
[36] Hulchanski, D., Murdie, R., Walks, A., & Bourne, L. (2013). Canada’s voluntary census is worthless. Here’s why. The Globe and Mail, 4.
[37] Meyers, L. S., Gamst, G. C., & Guarino, A. J. (2013). Performing data analysis using IBM SPSS. John Wiley & Sons.
[38] Smith, L. I. (2002). A tutorial on principal components analysis. Cornell University, USA, 51(52), 65.
[39] DiStefano, C., Zhu, M., & Mindrila, D. (2009). Understanding and using factor scores: Considerations for the applied researcher. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 14(20), 1-11.
[40] IBM Corp. (2013). IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 22.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.
[41] Sharma, S. (1996). Applied Multivariate Techniques, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 493 pp.
[42] Field, A. (2009). Discovering statistics using SPSS. Sage publications.
[43] Budd, A., & Moryson, D. (2017). Exploring food insecurity in the Cowichan Valley: A situation analysis for the Cowichan Food Security Coalition, (Master thesis, University of Victoria).
[44] Chan, L., Receveur, O., Sharp, D., Schwartz, H., Tikhonov, C., & Mimeault, C. (2011). First nations food, nutrition and environment study (fnfnes): results from British Columbia (2008/2009). University of Northern British Columbia.
[45] Kuhnlein, H. V., Fediuk, K., Nelson, C., Howard, E., & Johnson, S. (2013). The Legacy of the Nuxalk Food and Nutrition Program for Food Security, Health and Well-being of Indigenous Peoples in British Columbia. BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly, (179), 159-187.
[46] Ver Ploeg, M., Dutko, P., & Breneman, V. (2015). Measuring food access and food deserts for policy purposes. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 37(2), 205-225.
[47] Schuurman, N., Bell, N., Dunn, J. R., & Oliver, L. (2007). Deprivation indices, population health and geography: an evaluation of the spatial effectiveness of indices at multiple scales. Journal of urban health, 84(4), 591-603.