Award Date

5-1-2025

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Public Health (MPH)

Department

Environmental and Occupational Health

First Committee Member

Erika Marquez

Second Committee Member

Courtney Coughenour

Third Committee Member

Lung-Chang Chien

Fourth Committee Member

Ian Mcdonough

Number of Pages

61

Abstract

Food insecurity is the condition of having limited or uncertain access to adequate food. It contributes to poor diet-related health outcomes which are in turn influenced by the food environment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) developed the Modified Retail Food Environment Index (mRFEI) to characterize food environments by measuring the proportion of healthy and non-healthy retailers. The CDC mRFEI considers a variety of establishments but fails to include dollar stores, which contribute to the food environment by offering food and, in some cases, fresh produce. This study proposed an “expanded mRFEI” that modified the CDC mRFEI methodology to include dollar stores. Both indices were compared to assess whether the expanded mRFEI significantly changed the proportion of food environment classifications (food deserts, food swamps, and healthful tracts) among urban Clark County census tracts. There were 1,356 food retailers included in the CDC mRFEI and 76 dollar stores (10 healthy and 66 less healthy), added to the expanded mRFEI. Urban Clark County’s median mRFEI score of 13.33 remained unaltered after including dollar stores. The generalized McNemar’s test showed that the expanded mRFEI did not significantly change the number of food deserts (mRFEI = 133, expanded mRFEI = 128), swamps (mRFEI = 119, expanded mRFEI = 124), or healthful census tracts (mRFEI = 254, expanded mRFEI = 254). The findings suggest that the measurement of food environments is complex, and efforts to do so require a more comprehensive and systemic approach.

Keywords

Food Environment; Food Insecurity; Retail Food Environment Index

Disciplines

Public Health

File Format

pdf

File Size

1680 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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