Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

During October of 2002, NC1001 held an annual meeting in Washington D.C. to continue work on the project objectives. Project members participated in discussions regarding one or more of the following research objectives:

Objective 1. Determine the consequences of agriculture and food systems on the health of distinct populations.
Objective 2. Determine the impact community problem solving around food issues has on population health.
Objective 3. Determine the relationships among collective action, the structure of agriculture and food systems, and population health.
Objective 4. Determine the relationships between the scale of the agri-food system and population and landscape health.

NC1001 members also met with representatives from the National Institutes of Health, the National Research Initiative, USDA, and the Economic Research Service, USDA. These meetings provided an opportunity to discuss research ideas and funding opportunities.

Report on Objective 1-Determine the consequences of agriculture and food systems on the health of distinct populations

Lois Wright Morton (Iowa) and Chery Smith (Minnesota) have moved forward to work on similar projects in their respective states by securing funding from their Food Stamp Programs. Each state selected four communities that met similar criteria. The communities were selected based on the following criteria, including limited access to grocery stores (as identified using NAICS codes), higher than state-average poverty levels, and urban or rural ERS codes of 2 (urban) or 7/8/9 (rural). Additionally, civic engagement was the fourth criteria used to identify the sites. One urban and one rural area was identified to be civically engaged around food issues, while the other was less engaged. Civic engagement was assessed by having professionals in counties/neighborhoods (those meeting the first 3 criteria) rank their county on civic engagement based on a series of questions. Each state then conducted focus groups with professionals and consumers as described below. Furthermore, Minnesota and Iowa independently developed and administered surveys in their state and this is also described below.

1. Professional Focus Groups: Conducted focus groups in each of the four selected communities in each state. Topics included client access to commercial food sources and food assistance programs, healthy eating, client food choice behavior, types and extent of community food problems, and community engagement in solving food problems. Refreshments were served.
Focus group questions (for professionals and consumers) were developed by team members in each of the two states. Focus group participants included people who work within the food system, primarily food assistance programs. The types of employment varied, including extension, food shelf employees, educators, elected officials, managers, public health workers, and program directors. Focus groups were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Text was then coded using the NVIVO software and themes were identified. Participants also completed a questionnaire that assessed the quality, variety, and pricing of food stores, restaurants, and food programs in their community.

2. Consumer Focus Groups: Conducted focus groups in the same selected communities in each state. Topics included access to commercial food sources and food assistance programs, healthy eating, food choice behavior, types and extent of community food problems, and community engagement in solving food problems. Participants were reimbursed for their time and refreshments were served. Focus groups were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Text was then coded using the NVIVO software and themes were identified. Participants also completed a questionnaire that assessed the quality, variety, and pricing of food stores, restaurants, and food programs in their community.

3. Development of Survey: Themes from the focus group analysis were used to develop a six-page Food Survey for Minnesota. The guiding theoretical framework used was the Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura) that says behavior (food choice) is determined by interactions of environment, personal factors, and behavior. Prior to use the survey was appraised by a panel of expert reviewers for content and face validity. Iowa decided to develop a survey to focus on food security and civic structure. Components of that survey were also included on the Minnesota survey.

4. Surveys: Individuals were surveyed in the Minnesotas urban areas in a number of sites in order to capture ethnic diversity and various levels of income (n=396). Presently, the data is being entered into SPSS for further analyses. Iowa has selected to mail out surveys.

Report on Objective 2-Determine the impact community problem solving around food issues has on population health

Development of both research and funding opportunities for studying the role of problem-solving strategies as these relate to linkages between agricultural systems and community health was moved forward in discussions at the annual meeting of the NC1001 group in Washington D.C. One of the more important contributions to these developments was the acknowledgment that various individuals and organizations may chose between public and private strategies in overcoming barriers to food access issues. In the former, resources are cultivated within a community to solve problems, while
in the latter resources are pooled and used within and by a much smaller collective (or even individual). While both may be successful in constructing new possibilities for alternatives to various foodstuffs, the former is thought to have the advantage of offering the potential for a much wider array of new linkages and prospects.
This insight will help to complete a grant application, which will be submitted to the United States Department of Agriculture in either Spring or Summer of 2002. The study being proposed will continue to investigate the role public discourse - such as news articles and public meetings - plays in generating or impeding access to alternative food systems, as well as how the political processes of a locality are tied to such efforts. The
addition of seeking out public and private alternatives to gaining access to alternative food sources will compliment this effort.

Report on Objective 3-Determine the relationships among collective action, the structure of agriculture and food systems, and population health

One important justification for this objective is the need to understand the role and effectiveness of local actors in promoting change in local food and agricultural production systems and the health of local residents. The increased concentration of Agribusiness firms in the United States encourages scholars to focus on the actions of national and global actors, particularly multinational firms and national governments. However, to understand how systemic change occurs, it is also important to analyze the activities of local actors, including groups and organizations active at the community level. This is the goal of objective #3.
If the increasing democratization of the agri-food system is an important societal goal, then it is imperative to discern the expectations everyday people have in terms of the agricultural and retail food sectors. By investigating the activities of local collective actors, this objective will provide a foundation for ensuring that policies proposed by our research team truly reflect the interests of local people. In addition, by documenting forms of collective action that exist at the local level, it may be possible to identify some local initiatives that are working to promote democratic change and imporved public health at the local level. Identifying such initiatives would enable policy makers to identify policies that would work to support those initiatives. In other words, objective #3 is based on the notion that public policy needs to work with and reflect the actions of people, including those who are active in formal and informal groups and organizations.
Objective #3 also assumes that it will be difficult to rally local people around the notion of pre-emptive health care through better food buying and eating habits without understanding the interests of local people and the social groups they participate in.

Methodology
To achieve these goals, we are proposing a two part methodology. Initially, two communities will be identified in each participating state for intensive study. One of the communities in each state will be urban based, while the other will be a non-urban community in an agricultural region of the same state. In both cases, communities that have an organizational density of collective actors will be selected. By this we mean that both communities should have a number of local groups and collective actors that are engaged in promoting social change, although not all of these collective actors need to be engaged directly in promoting changes in the agri-food system or local population health. This methodology assumes that these collective actors are connected to one another through various formal and informal links.
In-depth, face-to-face interviews will be conducted with key informants from those groups and collective actors that can be identified. Through the use of a snowball technique, other actors both inside and outside of the community will be identified, and interviews will be conducted with representatives of those groups as well. Among other issues to be covered during the interviews, informants will be asked to discuss their organizations orientation toward agri-food Systems and agri-food policy, population health, and other forms of civic engagement. In this manner, we will discover how these groups organize themselves and cooperate with other groups to promote positive change in local agri-food Systems and population health.
Having done this, one collective actor in each community that is actively engaged in promoting change in the local agri-food system will be approached for participation in the second phase of the study. In this phase, a sample of that groups members will be selected for participation and in a mail survey. A comparable sample of non-group members living in the same communities will also be selected. The survey will ask questions about the food eating and health habits of members and non-members and will ascertain whether membership in the group is correlated with healthier eating and living habits.

Report on Objective 4-Determine the relationships between the scale of the agri-food system and population and landscape health

During the 2002 annual meeting of the NC1001 group in Washington D.C. participants in objective 4 outlined two research projects that will be submitted to funding agencies during the end of 2002 and early 2003. The central premise underlying both studies is that the structure of food retailing and agriculture condition individual health outcomes. This approach makes a substantial contribution to studies of nutrition and community health because prior research has focused exclusively on the impact of individual characteristics on individual health outcomes. Primarily, prior studies have overlooked changes in food retailing that and the impact of the structure of food retailing on consumers. Over the past 20 years food retailing has shifted away from small grocers to supermarkets, supercenters, and wholesale clubs that are not evenly distributed across suburban, urban, and rural markets. Thus, consumers in rural and inner city areas without access to large retailers are at a disadvantage. This issue is especially important for disadvantaged groups, such as the elderly, single parent families, and the poor, who may lack the resources needed to travel to retail centers.
To address this emerging issue, objective 4 participants will develop proposals for submission to the USDA National Research Initiative Rural Development Program (December 1, 2002) and the National Institutes of Health (February 1, 2003). The goal of these projects is to identify the manner in which changes in food retailing impact nutrition related outcomes, such as obesity, diabetes, and dietary intake. Because these issues cannot be addressed with publicly available data sources, objective 4 participants identified internal versions of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data available at the National Center for Health Statistics Research Data Center. These data provide an opportunity to link high quality measurement of individual level nutrition outcomes with contextual information on food retailing.

Lyson, Thomas A. 2002. "Advanced agricultural biotechnologies and sustainable agriculture." Trends in Biotechnology 20:193-196.

Lyson, Thomas A. 2001. "The promise of a more civic agriculture." Catholic Rural Life 43(2):40-43.

McCullum, C. D. Pelletier, D. Barr, and J. Wilkins. 2002. Use of a participatory planning process as a way to build community food security. Journal of the American Dietetic Association 102:962-967.

McIntosh, Alex, Dianne Sykes, and Karen S. Kubena. "Religion and Community among the Elderly: The Relationship between Religious and Secular Characteristics of the Elderly‘s Social Networks." Review of Religious Research. Forthcoming.

McIntosh, Alex and Jeff Sobal. "Rural Diet, Nutrition, and Body Weight." In Critical Issues for Rural Health edited by N. Glasgow, L.W. Morton, N. Johnson. Ames: Iowa State Press.

McIntosh, Alex. "Problems in Communicating Food Safety Risk to the Public." In Research Directions in Food Safety. Edited by R.C. Beier, R.L. Ziprin, and T.D. Phillips. Ames: Iowa State Press.

McIntosh, Alex and John K. Thomas. 2002 "Economic and Other Determinants of the Prevalence of HIV: A Test of Competing Hypotheses." Sociological Quarterly. Revise and resubmit. (Resubmitted)

McIntosh, Alex, Letitia Alston, Dianne Sykes, and Clasina Segura. 2002. "Determinants of Multiple Use of Telemedicine." Health Services Research. Under review.

Morton, L.W. 2003. Rural Health Policy in Rural Challenges for the 21st Century Edited by L. Swanson and D. Brown.

Morton, L. W. (forthcoming). Patterns of Spatial Inequality in Critical Issues for Rural Health. Edited by N. Glasgow, L.W. Morton, N. Johnson. Ames: Iowa State Press, Division of Blackwell.

Morton, L. W., D. Worthen, L. Weatherspoon. (forthcoming). Rural Food Security and Health in Critical Issues for Rural Health. Edited by N. Glasgow, L.W. Morton, and N. Johnson. Ames: Iowa State Press, Division of Blackwell.

Muqoz, Ed A., Catherine Lillehoj Goldberg, and Delfino Vargas-Chanes. 2002. Iowa Latino Im/migrant Families: Negotiating an Optimal Level of Cultural Assimilation. In Illusions of Borders: The National Presence of Mexicanos in the U.S. Gilberto Garcma and Jerry Garcma, (Eds.). Pp. 59-79. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company.

Muqoz, Ed A, Catherine Lillehoj Goldberg, and Martha Dettman. (in press). Substance Use Prevention: An Iowa Mexican Im/migrant Family Perspective. In Cocktails and Dreams: An Interpretive Perspective on Drug Abuse. Wilson R. Palacios and Paul F. Comwell, (Eds.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Pelletier, D., C. McCullum, V. Kraak, and K. Asher. Participation, power, and beliefs shape local food and nutrition policy. Journal of Nutrition (in press).

Wilkins, J. V. Kraak, D. Pelletier, C. McCullum, and U. Uusitalo. 2001. Moving from debate to dialogue about genetically engineered foods and crops: Insights from a land-grant university. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 18(2/3):167-201.

Young, Frank W. and Thomas A. Lyson 2001. "Structural pluralism and all-cause mortality." American Journal of Public Health 91:136-138.

Technical Reports

Greder, K, S. Garasky, H. Jensen, L.W. Morton. 2002. Iowa Food Security Report Card Project. Iowa State University.

Hanson, M. M. and L.W. Morton. 2002. Age-adjusted Mortality Rates by Selected Causes for U.S. Counties Based on Urban Influence by Four U.S. Regions 1968-97.
Iowa State University.

Morton, L.W., M. J. Oakland, E.A. Bitto, M. Sand, and B. Michaels. 2002. Iowa Community Food Assessment Project Report 2001-02. Iowa State University. Department of Sociology.

Presentations/Posters/Conferences

Bitto, A. and L.W. Morton. 2002. Food Deserts and Civic Structure. Poster presentation at the Rural Sociological Society Annual Meeting. Chicago, IL. August.

Blanchard, Troy C. 2002. Does the Effect of Inequality Vary? A Race Disaggregated Analysis of Mortality in Non-Metropolitan Counties. Paper presented at the Rural Sociological Society Annual Meeting. Chicago, IL. August.

Blanchard, Troy C. 2002. Civic Community and All Cause Mortality in U.S. Counties, 1990. Paper presented at the Southern Sociological Society Meetings, Baltimore, MD.

McIntosh, Alex. 2002. "Parental Time Constraints, Role Strains, Coping, and Children‘s Diet and Nutrition." Presented at the Food Assistance Research: Recent Findings and Emerging Issues Conference. Washington, DC. May.

McIntosh, Alex and Karen S. Kubena. 2002. "Time Constraints, Role Strains, and Adolescent Nutrition: Preliminary Results." Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Food and Society. Chicago, IL. June.

Morton, L.W. 2002. Does Food Insecurity Exist in Iowa? Nutrition Policy in Action, Iowa Dietetic Association, Des Moines, IA. March.

Morton, L.W. 2002. Food Security Assessment for Iowa. First Iowa Food Policy Conference. Drake University, Des Moines, IA. April.

Morton, L.W. 2002. Civic Engagement to Solve Food Access Problems. The Food System as an Instrument of Public Health, satellite videoconference originating from Iowa State University, Ames, IA. April.

Webber, Caroline and Thomas A. Lyson 2001. "American food deserts: a case study in rural New York." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society, Minneapolis, MN. June.

Welsh, Rick and Thomas A. Lyson. 2001. "Anti-corporate farming laws‘ impact on rural community welfare." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society. Albuquerque, NM. August.