- 1 - Alternative Measures of Food Deserts : Fruitful Options or Empty Cupboards ?

The growing obesity epidemic in the United States has served as the catalyst for promoting studies examining linkages between modifiable features of neighborhood food environments and the risk of being overweight and/or obese. Past studies have used several data sources to measure various dimensions of local food environments (e.g., number of fast food restaurants, number of grocery stores), including data from Dun & Bradstreet, ReferenceUSA, and local government agencies. Our analyses, conducted with data from Salt Lake County, Utah, reveal discrepancies between these data sources, with approximately one-third of the records in any one data set not represented in the remaining data sets. We utilize three food environment data sources linked to Census data to: (1) describe the prevalence of food deserts in Salt Lake County, and (2) investigate whether the estimated association between neighborhood food deserts and neighborhood characteristics is dependent on the data sources and food desert definitions used. Results indicate that identification of food deserts is sensitive to the commercial data sets selected. However, when data are aggregated at the block group level, the influence of variables representing the built environment and ethnic composition on the odds that a block group is identified as a food desert are less sensitive to the choice of data sets and the methods used to measure food deserts. Additional sensitivity analyses are needed to determine how characterizations of food deserts are determined based on the data sets analyzed and controls for confounding factors associated with food access.