ASU Food Policy and Environment Research Group

Programs such as the Healthy Corner Store Initiative have been widely adopted in recent years to increase the availability of healthy foods in small retail food stores. Valid and reliable measures are necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs. The validated instruments currently available for assessments require in-person evaluations, with surveys taking up to 30 minutes per store to complete. This instrument was developed by researchers at Arizona State University to simplify the process of evaluating the effectiveness of healthy store interventions, and to enable community partners and practitioners to conduct their own evaluations of food access. The SCAT was validated against an adapted version of the Nutrition Environment Measures Survey for Corner Stores, and tested for feasibility of use over the telephone. The SCAT was found to discriminate between corner stores in the top 20% of healthfulness scores from those in the lower 80% with 89% accuracy.

In 2015 a panel of experts was convened by Healthy Eating Research, a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to establish a set of minimum guidelines small retail food stores could reach to be classified as meeting basic or preferred stocking levels. Work is currently in progress to assess how the SCAT scores correlate with basic and preferred levels. 

Purpose: To develop a valid and feasible short-form corner store audit tool (SCAT) that could be used in-store or over the phone to capture the healthfulness of corner stores.

Design: Nonexperimental.

Setting: Four New Jersey cities.

Subjects: Random selection of 229 and 96 corner stores in rounds 1 and 2, respectively.

Measures: An adapted version of the Nutrition Environment Measures Survey for Corner Stores (NEMS-CS) was used to conduct in-store audits. The 7-item SCAT was developed and used for round 2 phone audits.

Analysis: Exploratory factor analysis and item response theory were used to develop the SCAT.

Results: The SCAT was highly correlated with the adapted NEMS-CS ( r = .79). Short-form corner store audit tool scores placed stores in the same healthfulness categories as did the adapted NEMS-CS in 88% of the cases. Phone response matches indicated that store owners did not distinguish between 2% and low-fat milk and tended to round up the fruit and vegetable count to 5 if they had fewer varieties.

Conclusion: The SCAT discriminates between higher versus lower healthfulness scores of corner stores and is feasible for use as a phone audit tool.

Background: Understanding determinants of high consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), a highly prevalent obesogenic behavior, will help build effective customized public health interventions.

Objective: Our aim was to identify child and parent lifestyle and household demographic factors predictive of high SSB consumption frequency in children from low-income, ethnically diverse communities that may help inform public health interventions.

Design: We used a cross-sectional telephone household survey.

Participants/setting: Participants were 717 boys and 686 girls aged 3 to 18 years old from the New Jersey Childhood Obesity Study living in five low-income cities (Camden, New Brunswick, Newark, Trenton, and Vineland). The adult most knowledgeable about household food shopping completed a questionnaire over the telephone inquiring about their and their child's dietary and physical activity habits, and household-, parent-, and child-level demographics.

Main outcome measures: Child's SSB consumption frequency was measured.

Statistical analysis performed: Multivariate ordered logit models were designed to investigate a variety of variables hypothesized to affect the frequency of SSB consumption. Exploratory stratified analyses by race, sex, and age were also conducted.

Results: Eight percent of our study participants never consumed SSBs, 45% consumed SSBs at least once per day, and 23% consumed twice or more per day. SSB consumption was higher among children 12 to 18 years vs 3 to 5 years (P<0.0001), of non-Hispanic black vs non-Hispanic white race/ethnicity (P=0.010), who were moderate fast food consumers vs never consumers (P=0.003), and those whose parents were high vs low SSB consumers (P<0.0001). Living in a non-English-speaking household (P=0.030), having a parent with a college or higher education vs less than high school (P=0.003), and having breakfast 6 to 7 days/wk vs never to 2 days/wk or less were associated with lower SSB consumption (P=0.001).

Conclusions: We identified a number of household-, parent-, and child-level predictors of SSB consumption, which varied by race, sex, and age, useful for building customized interventions targeting certain behaviors in ethnically diverse, low-income children.

The U.S. Preventive Task Force recommends that all patients be screened for obesity and given appropriate weight loss advice, if needed, as nutrition counseling by primary care physicians is a key objective for Healthy People 2020. This study assesses the association between health care provider's (HCP) advice to lose weight and eating behaviors among obese individuals. Data were collected using a household survey of adults in five New Jersey cities in 2009–10. Analyses presented are limited to 548 obese participants. Negative-binomial regression analysis determined the association of participants' eating behaviors and HCP's advice to lose weight, after adjusting for the participant's attempt to lose weight and demographic variables. Despite being obese, only 48% of the participants received weight loss advice from their HCP while 68% stated they were attempting to lose weight. HCP's advice to lose weight was associated with increased salad and fruit consumption (PR 1.3, 95% CI 1.06-1.61; PR 1.23, 95% CI 1.02-1.48). Attempting to lose weight was positively associated with a higher consumption of fruit (PR 1.39, 95% CI 1.13-1.72), vegetables (PR 1.22, 95% CI 1.07-1.39), and with eating fruits and vegetables as snacks (PR 1.62, 95% CI 1.28-2.05). Attempting to lose weight was negatively associated with consumption of sweet snacks (PR 0.68, 95% CI 0.49-0.94), sugar sweetened beverages (PR 0.71, 95% CI 0.58-0.87) and fast food (PR 0.77, 95% CI 0.62-0.97). There were no significant interactions between HCP's advice and attempts to lose weight. Obese adult's attempt to lose weight, and not HCP's advice to lose weight, was a predictor for healthy eating behaviors. Interventions in medical practices should train HCPs on effective strategies for motivating obese patients to adopt healthier lifestyles.