A Mobile Application to Improve Procurement and Distribution of Healthful Foods & Beverages in Baltimore City

Study Summary

Low-income urban communities have many small food stores, but poor access to healthier foods and beverages. The investigators will develop, implement and evaluate the feasibility of a Baltimore Urban food Distribution (BUD) web-based application (app) to improve access to affordable, healthier products from local producers/wholesalers in 38 urban corner stores in low-income Baltimore neighborhoods, using a randomized controlled trial design and assess its impact on store stocking and sales. The R34 will provide a developed and tested version of the BUD app, which will resolve challenges related to affordability and delivery of healthful foods and beverages to small food stores, permit development of new instruments, assess potential impacts at the consumer level, permitting power and sample size estimates for the full-scale clinical trial, and demonstrate the investigators' ability to recruit and retain large numbers of wholesalers, producers, and corner stores in low-income urban settings.

Primary Outcome

Stocking of healthy foods will be assessed from Pre to Post intervention at participating corner stores. A Store Impact Questionnaire will capture the number of promoted foods and beverages stocked during each visit, based on direct structured observation of corner store shelves. The investigators will create healthy food availability scores (range 0-27). The investigators will calculate change scores, by subtracting each pre measure from each post measure. A higher score is better, indicates mo

Interventions

• BEHAVIORAL Web-based application connecting small food store owners and suppliers of healthier foods and beverages