Access to Healthy Food Stores for Residents of Aboriginal Reserves in Rural British Columbia

Abstract

Abstract:The rate of food insecurity has increased tremendously over the past decade in Canada. This increase has been more pronounced in rural and remote areas especially among Aboriginal peoples. Substantial studies indicated that nearly half of the on-reserve Aboriginal households in British Columbia (BC) suffer from some degree of food insecurity. Despite the valuable research about obtaining traditional food, the issue of access to market food has been less discussed in the literature. The aim of this study was to assess the local food environment of on-reserve Aboriginal peoples by using a proximity-based approach tool in terms of access to healthy food stores such as supermarket and grocery stores. In the first stage, the addresses of all healthy food stores were geocoded into a map layer. Then the locations of Aboriginal reserves were geocoded to a separate map layer. In the second stage, using "Closest Facility Analysis" tool in ArcGIS Version 10.3, the distance based on a 15-minute driving time was measured from each reserve to the closest healthy food destination on CanMapRouteLogistics network. The results indicated that 25% of Aboriginal reserves did not have reasonable access to healthy food stores. We concluded that Aboriginal peoples in low access rural reserves with lower socioeconomic status are at potential risk of perpetuate food insecurity.