The Effect of Corner Store Makeovers on Store Patrons and Nearby Corner Stores

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Evidence suggests that overweight and obesity outcomes are affected by the food environment, or the distribution of healthy and unhealthy food outlets around the places where people live, work, and go to school. An emerging approach to improving the food environment in low income and minority communities is the 'corner store makeover,' which involves partnering with local corner stores to expand access to fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, and other healthy food. "Corner Store Makeovers in East Los Angeles: Improving Healthy Food Access" is an NHLBI-funded research project that is currently being conducted by the UCLA/USC Center for Population Health and Health Disparities (CPHHD). The project is working with four intervention stores in East L.A. to greatly expand their inventories of fresh produce and other healthy food, as well as to reconfigure each store's layout to make healthy food more prominent and visually appealing. In addition, the project is working with youth from local high schools to develop a community-driven and culturally competent social marketing campaign that promotes healthy food and the made over stores. In this study, I propose to complement the existing evaluation strategy of the corner store makeovers project by evaluating its effects on: 1) store patrons, and 2) corner stores that are nearby intervention stores. To assess the effects of the intervention on store patrons, I propose to work with trained students and staff at CPHHD to conduct pre/post- interviews with patrons at four intervention and four comparison stores. This evaluation study will help us to assess the effect of corner store makeovers on patrons' nutrition knowledge and attitudes towards the store and to determine if corner store makeovers change the healthfulness of their food purchasing and consumption. To evaluate the effect of the intervention on nearby corner stores, I propose to conduct a longitudinal study of healthy food inventories and in-store advertisements at five corner stores nearby each of the intervention and comparison stores. Due to the social marketing campaign and substantial media coverage of the corner store makeovers project, I believe that demand for healthy food will increase substantially in the neighborhoods surrounding intervention stores. As a result, nearby stores may be motivated to make their own healthy changes. Each of these supplemental evaluation components will greatly add to the very limited empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of the corner store makeovers strategy. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: An emerging approach to increasing access to healthy food in low income and minority communities is the 'corner store makeover,' which involves partnering with local corner stores to expand access to fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, and other healthy food. I propose to evaluate how a corner store makeover project in East Los Angeles affects store patrons and nearby corner stores. This study will add to the very limited empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of the corner store makeovers strategy and will be the first to evaluate its effectiveness in a predominantly Latino community.