A Geographical Information System (GIS) using ArcGIS tools was adopted to implement three types of spatial analysis: coverage, density and proximity, to evaluate the geographical access to healthy food of the populations in Dorset Municipality, Tasmania, Australia. Data on food outlets, the aggregated socioeconomic disadvantage index, locations, income and population were collected using the Tasmanian Food Outlet Audit and Tasmanian Healthy Food Basket tools. Spatial autocorrelation was conducted where appropriate to examine the relationship between locations and food access. Healthy food outlets were concentrated in the central areas, areas in proximity to the national road and areas of dense population. Their locations also favored the more socio-economically deprived or disadvantaged areas (Moran’s Index = 0.924, z-score = 5.187, p-value = 0.00 < 0.05). Spatial identification of food deserts in Dorset has been a pioneering attempt to visualize areas with the highest demand for improvement in healthy food access and may be applicable to other areas with similar characteristics.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	food security, food access, food deserts, healthy food, proximity, spatial analysis
Research Division:	Biomedical and Clinical Sciences
Research Group:	Nutrition and dietetics
Research Field:	Nutrition and dietetics not elsewhere classified
Objective Division:	Health
Objective Group:	Evaluation of health and support services
Objective Field:	Evaluation of health and support services not elsewhere classified
UTAS Author:	Le, Q (Dr Quynh Le)
UTAS Author:	Nguyen, HB (Dr Hoang Nguyen)
UTAS Author:	Dieters, S (Dr Stefan Dieters)
UTAS Author:	Auckland, S (Mr Stuart Auckland)
ID Code:	103513
Year Published:	2015
Web of Science® Times Cited:	4
Deposited By:	UTAS Centre for Rural Health
Deposited On:	2015-10-14
Last Modified:	2017-11-01
Downloads:	0