BACKGROUND Inadequate access to healthful foods has been identified as a significant barrier to healthful dietary behaviors among individuals who live in low-income communities. The purpose of this study was to gather low-income community members' opinions about their food purchasing choices and their perceptions of the most effective ways to increase access to healthful foods in their communit...

BACKGROUND Low-income and minority communities have higher rates of nutrition-related chronic diseases than do high-income and nonminority communities and often have reduced availability to healthful foods. Corner store initiatives have been proposed as a strategy to improve access to healthful foods in these communities, yet few studies evaluating these initiatives have been published. COMMU...

Fossil-fuel combustion by-products are the world's most significant threat to children's health and future and are major contributors to global inequality and environmental injustice. The emissions include a myriad of toxic air pollutants and carbon dioxide (CO₂), which is the most important human-produced climate-altering greenhouse gas. Synergies between air pollution and climate change can m...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to determine whether physician offices located in high-minority and low-income neighborhoods have different levels of access to information technology than offices located in lower-minority and higher-income areas. DESIGN A cross-sectional survey was conducted of pediatrics, family medicine, and general practice offices in Orange County, California. Survey ...

This paper tests whether state school finance reform alters neighborhood income homogeneity. One implication of the Tiebout model is that within-community homogeneity declines as a result of an exogenous decrease in the ability of jurisdictions to set local tax and expenditure levels. The property tax revolt and the school finance equalization reform of the 1970s and 1980s offer a test of the r...

This paper presents a model of an urban area with local income taxes used to finance a local public good. Households differ in both incomes and their taste for housing. The existence of an asymetric equilibrium is shown in a calibrated two-community model assuming single-peaked distributions for income and housing taste. The equilibrium features segregation of households by both incomes and tas...

For many people, the corner store remains the main grocer, or the only source of sustenance in minority communities. This study examined the distribution of corner stores as a future reference point to provide healthy food access to predominantly African American communities that lack full service grocery stores. Business data was obtained from respective county by use of Standard Industrial Co...

OBJECTIVE Given that small food stores may be important retail food sources in low-income urban communities, our objective was to examine cross-city comparative data documenting healthy food availability within such facilities, particularly those located in low-income areas and nearby schools. DESIGN Food stores in Baltimore, Maryland; Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota; Oakland, California; and...

This paper considers the impact of community-level variables over and above the effects of individual characteristics on healthcare access of low-income children and adults residing in large metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). Further, we rank MSAs' performance in promoting healthcare access for their low-income populations. The individual-level data come from the 1995 and 1996 National Heal...

Acute gastroenteritis caused by viruses is one of the leading causes of infantile morbidity. The aim of the present study was to investigate the presence of human caliciviruses of the genera norovirus and sapovirus in children up to 3 years of age with acute gastroenteritis from low-income communities in the city of Salvador, Brazil. This study is an extension of previous work carried out to es...