The Intersection of Food Insecurity and Transportation Insecurity in Harris County, Texas

Abstract

ABSTRACTFood insecurity and transportation inequity are known to disproportionately impact the welfare of marginalized communities. Our study analyzed census data in Harris County, Texas comparing food insecurity rate and components of the Quality Affordable Transportation Index to explore their relationship. Mapping, geographically weighted regression (GWR), and linear regression methods were used to identify relationships between food insecurity and transportation. Poor walkability is more commonly associated with food insecure areas than is poor public transit in Harris County. GWR helped to identify an area of strong correlation between walkability and food insecurity in southwestern Harris County that may benefit from further study.KEYWORDS: Food insecuritytransportationsocial determinants of healthfood desertsspatial regression AcknowledgementsOur team would like to thank LINK Houston, The Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University, and Feeding America for providing the data used in the study. We would also like to thank Shivani Mehta for her assistance with literature review.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).