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Childhood Obesity May Be More Prevalent in Rural Areas

by Joe Savrock (December 2006)

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA. - Community factors characteristic of some rural areas may make children in those locales more susceptible to obesity, suggests a researcher at Penn State’s Center on Rural Education and Communities (CREC).

The center has recently conducted two related studies that examine health and nutrition among school children in rural areas. One study looks at the effect of a relatively narrower choice of foods for consumers at grocery outlets. The other examines the opportunities and constraints faced by school districts attempting to purchase fresh foods from local agricultural producers in a practice known as farm-to-school (FTS) programming.

“Food Deserts” in Rural Pennsylvania

Most people envision a desert as an isolated region that lacks the most necessary ingredient for sustaining life: water. But one particular type of desert, known as a “food desert,” often is lacking in other nutritional components—those found in healthful foods.

Food deserts are defined as areas that have limited access to full-service grocery stores. Within these areas, residents often tend to rely more on small-scale convenience stores that stock an abundance of high-caloric processed foods, while offering fewer choices of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Kai Schafft, CREC director, sees a strong relationship between food deserts and obesity. “The food choices that people make are limited to what is available to them,” he said. “In areas where there are limited options for purchasing food from full-scale grocery outlets, research shows that there is a higher risk of overweight and obesity. And that’s what we’re seeing among rural children in Pennsylvania.”

CREC, in collaboration with faculty and graduate students from Penn State’s Department of Rural Sociology, used U.S. Census data and GIS mapping technology to identify food desert areas in rural Pennsylvania (see shaded areas on map). Their research yielded two interesting findings: (1) school districts in those rural food desert areas are more likely to be socio-economically disadvantaged and exhibit higher levels of poverty and insecurity, and (2) independent of that economic disadvantage, children schooled within food deserts are at greater risk of obesity.

“Gaining a better understanding of how community contexts such as food deserts affect public health outcomes is an important step in developing more comprehensive school and community-based interventions to increase the health of rural children,” noted Schafft.

Farm-to-School Purchasing

FTS programs refer to school food purchasing programs that emphasize bringing fresh, regionally sourced foods onto school menus. The programs enhance markets for local farmers and improve the nutritional quality of school meals. They also often incorporate educational programming to increase student understanding of the food sources and the importance of proper nutrition.

Both the nutritional and the educational components of FTS are seen as strategies to combat obesity in the schools. This is especially important since schools receiving federal lunch program assistance are now mandated to develop local wellness policies promoting nutrition, physical activity, and overweight prevention in compliance with the federal Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004.

CREC sees farm-to-school programs as one potential school-based approach to help combat obesity. Schafft has been working with two other Penn State researchers—Jessica Bagdonis, graduate student in Agricultural Extension Education, and Clare Hinrichs, associate professor of rural sociology—to examine the opportunities and barriers for schools to implement FTS programs.

To determine the effect of location on farm-to-school efforts, this past year the researchers conducted a comparison study, interviewing 30 stakeholders connected to two Pennsylvania FTS programs—one rural and one urban. The urban group saw school children and their parents as the primary beneficiaries of the program, by virtue of more healthful food options along with the reinforcing nutrition education. Rural stakeholders were more likely to view FTS programming as a community-based effort. The rural group cited extended community-level benefits, including preservation of the agricultural landscape and improved local economies.

At both the urban and rural sites, local food consistency, seasonal availability, cost, and time concerns were identified as barriers to FTS implementation.

Schafft and Hinrich have just received a grant from The Center for Rural Pennsylvania to continue and extend their study of farm-to-school programming through a statewide survey of school district food managers and further case studies. This work will be taking place in 2007 and should result in a state-based guide for schools interested in incorporating farm-to-school programming in their food purchasing and curricular decision-making.

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The Penn State College of Education serves approximately 2,800 undergraduate and 1,200 graduate students each year. The College prepares administrators, counselors, psychologists and researchers, as well as K-12 teachers in 21 different specialty areas. All of the College of Education graduate programs, that are ranked by the U.S. News & World Report, appear at least in the top 15, with six programs in the top ten.The College's Higher Education Administration program is ranked 1st and the Workforce Education and Development program is ranked 2nd. The College is known nationally for its education research and outreach, housing such centers as the Center for the Study of Higher Education, the Center for Science and the Schools, the Mid-Atlantic Center for Mathematics Teaching and Learning, and the Regional Education Laboratory--Mid-Atlantic.

For more information on Penn State’s College of Education, contact EdRelations@psu.edu, call 814-863-1192, or visit www.ed.psu.edu.