Evaluating Food Security and Summer Meal Access in Harris County

Families, especially those in Food Deserts and in low-income areas, depend on school lunch programs throughout the year. During the summer, this stability is disrupted. Though summer meal sites have been established throughout the state of Texas to resolve this need for healthy, nutritious meals, there are still high-need areas that lack a summer meal sites. This project assesses the current distribution of summer meal sites, through two means, in Harris County at the census-tract level. First, after calculating the 'average' distance one travels to a Bus Stop and Supermarket for every tract, an 'index' for a map was created. This allows for direct visual comparison of how tracts vary in food and transportation access – two key variables in determining a community's need for a summer meal site. Second, a logistic regression was taken to see if the presence – or absence – of a summer meal site is correlated with a tract's average Supermarket distance. A McFadden's r-squared value of 0.004138 was found, indicating that, presently, Supermarket distances are not a factor considered when determining a summer meal site location. Additionally, the wide variation of food and transportation distances in Harris County necessitates the need for a smaller area to be studied and for more variables to be taken into account.