This is a presentation we gave at the first annual San Antonio Food Policy conference in May 2012. It goes through the results of a project funded by the city of San Antonio on assessing food insecurity in the city.

1. A Food Security Assessment for
San Antonio, TX
COREY S. SPARKS, PHD1
P. JOHNELLE SPARKS, PHD1
LESLI BIEDIGER-FRIEDMAN, PHD, MPH2
1D E P A R T M E N TOF DEMOGRAPHY
2D E P A R T M E N T O F H E A L T H A N D K I N E S I O L O G Y
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO
MAY 10, 2012
SAN ANTONIO FOOD POLICY CONFERENCE
COREY.SPARKS@UTSA.EDU

2. Outline
 Introduction
 What we know about food insecurity
 Description of SA Food security project
 What we WANT to know about food security in our community
 Objectives of project
 Results from project
 Summary
 Limitations
 Moving forward
 Future projects

3. Food Insecurity
 Food secure—These households had access, at all
times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all
household members.
 85.3% of households in 2009
 Food insecure—At times during the year, these
households were uncertain of having, or unable to
acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their
members because they had insufficient money or other
resources for food.
 14.7% of households
 In 2009, 50.2 million people lived in food-insecure
households, including 17.2 million children.
Source: Nord, Mark, Alisha Coleman-Jensen, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carlson. Household Food
Security in the United States, 2009. ERR- 108, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Econ. Res. Serv. November
2010.

4. What we know
 The prevalence of food insecurity varied considerably
among household types. Some groups with rates of food
insecurity much higher than the national average (14.7
percent) were:
 Households with incomes below the official poverty line—$21,756 for
a family of four in 2009—(43.0 percent).
 Households with children, headed by a single woman (36.6 percent).
 Households with children, headed by a single man (27.8 percent).
 Black households (24.9 percent).
 Hispanic households (26.9 percent).
Source: Nord, Mark, Alisha Coleman-Jensen, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carlson. Household Food Security in the
United States, 2009. ERR- 108, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Econ. Res. Serv. November 2010.

5. What we know about Texas
 Texas ranks 2nd in the country for food insecurity
prevalence.
 17.4% of households in Texas were food insecure
between 2007-2009.
 Many Texans qualify for food assistance
programs, but do not participate due to:
 Limited awareness
 Stigma
 Inadequate funding
 Enrollment barriers (staff shortages, red tape, outdated rules)
make the benefits hard to access

6. What we know about San Antonio
 A study conducted by the San Antonio Food Bank
and Feeding American in 2009 finds:
 Many clients are food insecure with low or very low food
security
 Many clients report choosing between food and other
necessities (bills, rent/mortgage, medical care, transportation,
etc.)
 Many clients are in poor health

7. What we know about San Antonio
 33% of client households served by the SAFB are
receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP) benefits.
 Among households with children ages 0-3 years of age,
69% participate in the Special Supplemental Nutrition
Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
 Among households with school-age children, 57% and
42%, respectively, participate in the federal school lunch
and school breakfast programs.
 Among households with school-age children, 15%
participate in the summer food program.

8. Research Objective 1
 Identify the populations and areas within Bexar
County/San Antonio that are at highest risk of food
insecurity
 Population risk factors for food insecurity are high
unemployment, high poverty rates, minority status, lower
educational attainment, poor quality housing/housing
tenure and household structure.
 US 2000 Census Summary file 3 and the five year American
Community Survey (ACS) 2005-2009.
 This allows us to map areas within the city that face high
levels of food insecurity “risk”

9. Objective 1: Population Level Food Insecurity Risk

10. Risk Index and USDA Food Deserts

11. Who lives in Food Deserts?
 In 2010, these were the populations that lived in the
60 tracts identified as food deserts in Bexar County
 17% of the Bexar County Population lived in a food
desert

12. Demographic Comparison of Food Deserts and
Non-Food Deserts
 Food deserts have higher poverty rates, higher
minority concentrations, lower incomes, higher
foreign born populations and lower marriage rates

13. Research Objective 2
 Construct and develop a spatially organized
Geographic Information System (GIS) of food
resources and resources related to addressing food
insecurity problems in the city
 Use existing sources, national databases and fieldwork to
identify a comprehensive locational database of food
resources
 The database consists of multiple layers of information,
including but not limited to locations of grocery stores,
restaurants, food pantries, markets and farmers markets
 This allows the visualization and comparison of areas of the
city where at-risk populations live with their food resources
and transportation opportunities
 Also use public data from USDA on “food deserts”

14. Objective 2 Data
 Reference USA database
 Addresses and characteristics of over 16 million businesses in
the US
 This source was queried for NAICS codes representing
restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores and other food-
related businesses
 San Antonio Food Bank
 Database of addresses of all partner agencies
 ESRI road data

15. Objective 2 Methods
 Geocoding of addresses
 Process that gives addresses real world geographic coordinates
 Allows businesses to be mapped relative to other features
(roads, food deserts, etc)
 Geographic Network Analysis
 Service area analysis
 Allows for the mapping of an area around a business to be
mapped in terms of drive or walk times
 e.g. What are the areas that can reach a grocery store in 15
minutes?

16.  SAFB agencies

17.  Convenience Stores

18.  Restaurants

19.  Grocery Stores

20.  Drive time analysis
 Polygons show 5 and
10 minutes drive time
areas
 Most of Bexar county,
and San Antonio
especially, has at least
a 10 minute
accessibility to a
grocery
 This says nothing
about quality of stores
or other barriers to
access

21. Research Objective 3
 Conduct a survey to assess who in San Antonio faces food
insecurity
 Aimed at documenting social determinants of food insecurity
reported by families that belong to at-risk populations within Bexar
County
 Conduct primary data collection using a survey instrument based on
the standardized assessment tool of Bickel et al (USDA protocols)
 Focus on areas defined in Objective 1 to target “at risk” population of
the city
 Responses from this data collection effort were compared to local,
state and national level data on food insecurity from the Current
Population Survey (CPS) December supplement on Food Insecurity,
which uses the same questionnaire

22. Survey Locations
 5 Locations Agreed to
our survey
 Claude Black Center
 Neighborhood Place
 Christian Assistance
Ministry
 HemisView Farmers
Market
 Flea Market San Antonio

23. Survey Respondents
 A total of 241 respondents from the five sites

24. Comparison of CPS with Current Survey
80
70
60
50
40
30
CPS 2009 %
20 CPS 2010 %
Current Survey %
10
0
Worried food Food did not Not afford to Cut the size of Ever eat less Every hungry Did you lose Did you not
would run out last and did eat balanced meals than you because there weight eat for a
before get not have meals should was not because there whole day
more money money to buy because there enough was not because there
more was not money to buy enough was not
enough food money to buy enough
money to buy food money to buy
food food

25. Comparison of Respondents by Residence
90.00
80.00
70.00
60.00
50.00
40.00
30.00
Current Survey In Food Desert %
20.00 Current Survey Not in Food Desert%
10.00
0.00
Worried Food did not Not afford Cut the size Ever eat less Every Did you lose Did you not
food would last and did to eat of meals than you hungry weight eat for a
run out not have balanced should because because whole day
before get money to meals because there was there was because
more money buy more there was not enough not enough there was
not enough money to money to not enough
money to buy food buy food money to
buy food buy food

26. Children’s Food Security
60
50
40
30 CPS 2009 %
CPS 2010 %
Current Survey %
20
10
0
We relied on low cost food to feed the Our children were hungry but we could
children because there was not enough not afford more food
money

27. Survey Analysis
 Further analysis of the survey data show:
 For Adult food insecurity
 Non-Hispanic Blacks faced higher food insecurity than both
Hispanics and Non-Hispanic Whites
 Use of home gardens shows a very strong association with food
insecurity in adults
 For Children’s food insecurity
 Larger households, lack of social support and living in a food
desert increase the chances of parents reporting food
insecurity for their children
 Easy access to grocery stores reduced the chances

28. Summary
 In this project, three main objectives were attempted
 Describe the population level patterns of food insecurity risk in
Bexar county
 When demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the tracts
considered food deserts were compared to those not considered
being food deserts, a general picture of socioeconomic inequality
appeared.
 Food deserts showed several negative characteristics including
higher poverty rates and lower average incomes.

29. Summary
 Construct a spatial database of food resources within Bexar
County
 An analysis of estimated drive times to grocery stores was
presented, and showed that most of the county, and certainly the
city of San Antonio has easy access to a grocery store.
 The primary value of the database is for future analyses, where
specific questions concerning access to specific types of food
establishments or comparisons between accessibility to different
types of establishments could be carried out.

30. Summary
 Conduct a survey of individual household food insecurity
 Levels of food insecurity among the respondents of the survey
were much higher than among the general population of the
county.
 This most likely stems from the nature of the locations selected
for the surveys.
 There were few differences in adult food insecurity by age, race or
marital status of the respondents.
 Additionally, few food access variables affected the rate of food
insecurity among adults.
 Several associations were found for child food
insecurity, including parent’s age, household size, ease of grocery
access and social support for food assistance. Additionally, if the
respondents lived in a food desert, children within the household
were over four times more likely to face food insecurity.

31. Limitations
 First, by relying on census tracts as a unit of analysis, we are
ignoring any real “social neighborhoods” that exist in the
city/county.
 Tracts are at best a crude proxy for neighborhoods.
 Our survey consisted of only a small sample (n=241 people), whose
characteristics only roughly match the population they were chosen to
represent.
 Further data must be collected to generate a more
representative sample of the county’s population, and further
analyses are essential to understanding the food insecurity
issues present in our community.
 The data generated by this project is a good start at forming a
database that is inclusive of both individual level surveys and
aggregate level neighborhood characteristics.

32. Moving Forward
 Future Projects
 Further studies of food resource access
 Focusing on rural areas around Bexar County
 Expand food insecurity study to compare rural and urban
areas of South Texas
 Examine childhood food insecurity and the roles of program
participation

33. Acknowledgements
 Metro Health
 UTSA College of Public Policy
 UTSA College of Education and Human
Development
 Numerous student volunteers who assisted with
surveys
 Survey locations for allowing us to conduct our work