Mallika Bose
Associate Professor, Dept. of Landscape Architecture
Director, Hamer Center for Community Design
The Pennsylvania State University

For the past 5 years I have been working on understanding the food systems of a variety of disadvantaged communities in Pennsylvania: residents of public housing in Harrisburg and Lewistown, and two low-income neighborhoods in West Philadelphia. Using a place based approach, my work has centered on understanding the residents’ eating profile (food consumption patterns, food shopping and eating out behavior, and household food security status) perception regarding the food environment, barriers to healthy eating, and the existing food environment in these communities.

This research project is ongoing and is funded by PA Tracks (a USDA funded program). We have used a combination of qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative methods (survey including nutritional screeners, USDA’s food security status module, and demographic information) to understand the food system at these locations from the residents’ perspective. At the same time we have collected detailed information on the food environment by completing audit of food stores and restaurants in the study neighborhoods with the Nutrition Environment Measures for Stores and Restaurants (NEMS-S/NEMS-R).

Our intent is to complete a comparative analysis of the study locations (urban, small city – Harrisburg, rural – Lewistown, and urban, metropolitan city – West Philadelphia) to examine how place is implicated in the food system of low-income groups. This work has been conceived within a social science paradigm, and has included graduate students in different parts of the project. I am particularly interested in finding out how other researchers/educators have used the public scholarship model to engage in long-term projects on issues centered on food systems and food justice. I am also interested in combining social science methodologies with humanistic methodologies and seek to engage in dialogue with colleagues engaged in participatory action research on food justice issues.