Presentation description

Food insecurity can be defined by the lack of access to food and the lack of access to healthy food. Food Justice is a movement that focuses on improving access to healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food for a given community. The effects of food insecurity are being exacerbated by climate change. Climate change affects the quality, access, and availability of food. This is because it exacerbates heat waves and droughts directly impacting the production of food.
The project will focus on environmental justice in the US by assessing what individuals are affected by negative environmental factors (eg heat exposure, air pollution, etc.) This project is an extension of work I am conducting with Drs. Tim Collins and Sara Grineski. The scope of this is to examine the disparities for historically marginalized racial populations, for example, African Americans and Latinos. I have been working on this project for 1 year and, with UROP Scholars funding, I plan on continuing my current research with Drs. Collins and Grineski.
I will analyze negative environmental disparities by integrating data from restricted US Census microdata from the American Community Survey (ACS) at the individual level. I will use the ACS data to create variables on individuals' race, ethnicity, and income. Based on locational information in the ACS regarding where individuals live. I will then conduct basic statistical analyses to evaluate disparities for individuals from various social groups. Under the guidance of my mentors, I will conduct these analyses in the Wasatch Front Federal Statistical Research Data (WFRDC), located at the University of Utah.