Food, and access to it, is a determinant of health and well-being. Families living in food deserts, often defined as geographic areas where residents experience barriers to accessing healthy foods, including, both physical and economic obstacles such as poverty and the lack of full-service grocery stores, face greater risk for adverse health outcomes. The burden of food deserts extends beyond access to affordable healthy food, and leads to a potential greater disparity in health outcomes among residents in these communities. A community that is less populated, low-income, less educated, as well as primarily non-white is at more of a risk of becoming a food desert. Food deserts occur in both rural, and urban areas where the market for grocery
