Engaged Graduate Student Grants
Evaluation of a Farmers’ Market Incentive Program
Assessing whether SNAP participants’ fruit and vegetable intake and house-hold food security improve when participating in a farmers’ market incentive program in Western New York.
Low-income households experience disproportionately high rates of obesity, chronic disease and food insecurity and have notably low intakes of fruits and vegetables. Farmers’ market incentive programs that subsidize the cost of fresh produce for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants may be one way to improve diets, stretch SNAP benefits and support local farmers; but researchers know little about the utility and cost-effectiveness of such programs. Jennifer Garner is working to fill this knowledge gap by assessing whether fruit and vegetable intake and household food security improve over the course of participation in Double Up Food Bucks, a farmers’ market incentive program in Western New York. She is also analyzing the program’s overall cost-effectiveness.
Topics: Access, Equity and Justice; Food and Agriculture; Health, Nutrition and Medicine
The Team
- Graduate student: Jennifer Garner, nutritional sciences
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Special committee chair:
Rebecca Seguin, Division of Nutritional Sciences
College of Human Ecology
- Community partner: Field & Fork Network