Eradication of Food Deserts through Public Policy: Case of Durham, North Carolina

Eradication of Food Deserts through Public Policy: Case of Durham, North Carolina

Typically in many urban cities and neighborhoods across the U.S., low-wealth citizens in low-income communities have had limited access to healthy foods and food sources and thus their food intake are forced to depend heavily on low-quality food suppliers like convenient stores and fast food restaurants. Notably, such food insecurity concerns are especially prevalent in minority communities. The lack of access to healthy and affordable foods is not a natural and accidental phenomenon but the result of policy decisions made at multiple levels by multiple actors. Although a growing number of scholars and practitioners are involved in this “food desserts” issue, there is still a need of more academic research not just on identifying communities with no or distant grocery stores, but also assessing the impact of the lack of food security on health disparity at the local and community levels. In this paper, we examine how people in communities have been affected by inadequate access to healthy foods using cases from Durham, North Carolina which has been plagued by food deserts. We also examine how this unequal distribution of food access has aggravated health disparity status regarding various health-related outcomes at the individual and community levels. Based on the review of the current policy actions to eradicating food deserts, specifically in the city of Durham, North Carolina, we suggest several public policy recommendations for providing better access to healthier foods while developing stable food environments, particularly thorough a public-private partnership as a more efficient and equitable delivery mechanism of healthy and affordable foods to such underserved communities.