Factors Associated With the Use of Community Food Resources: Andersen Model Application for Future Interventions

Objective

The study objective is to examine the factors associated with the use of different community food resources using the Andersen Model.

Target Audience

Adults

Program Description

In a cross-sectional study conducted among 1,830 adults 18 years and older on REDCap (a web-based platform) through Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Evaluation Methods

Participants were asked about their socio-demographics, motivation for shopping decisions, shopping transportation modes and estimated travel time, food security status, and perceived community-level food-related needs. This information was organized into predisposing, enabling, and need factors (predictors) that are related to food access using the Andersen Model. The outcome variables were about how they use different community food resources, such as healthy food retail stores, less healthy food retail stores, food assistance programs, food service resources, and mobile food resources. Descriptive and hierarchical regression analyses were conducted using SAS, with significance set at p < 0.05.

Results

The participants have a mean age of 37.9 ± 12.1 years; were predominantly White (87.6%), non-Hispanic (85.8%), and urban residents (56.6%). Majority use the supermarkets (66%), supercenters (55%), and friend's/relative's places (53.2%) as their food resources. Predisposing factors that were statistically associated with the use of different community food resources were age, marital status, race, ethnicity, and household size. The enabling factors included travel time, transportation mode, income, and motivator of shopping decisions such as coupons and great sales, use of WIC benefits, and delivery services. The need factors included food security and community-level food-related needs such as culturally relevant and low-price foods. However, these vary by the types of food resources.

Conclusions

Recommendations include designing multi-level initiatives that would transform food stores and programs' food offerings, distribution logistics, and transportation access into conduits for healthier food access among underserved populations.

Funding

None