Publications by authors named "Christina M Kasprzak"

Objectives: The Veggie Van model is a mobile market model that is efficacious in increasing fruit and vegetable consumption for lower-income participants. The model is currently being evaluated for its effectiveness in a multi-state trial. Preliminary implementation data, collected through process measures surveys and implementation interviews, indicate that there are several barriers to implementation among partner organizations and implementation fidelity to the Veggie Van model was low.

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Community engagement is well established as a key to improving public health. Prior food environment research has largely studied community engagement as an intervention component, leaving much unknown about how food retailers may already engage in this work. The purpose of this study was to explore the community engagement activities employed by neighborhood food retailers located in lower-income communities with explicit health missions to understand the ways stores involve and work with their communities.

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Introduction: Mobile produce markets are becoming an increasingly prevalent, accepted, and effective strategy for improving fruit and vegetable (F&V) access and consumption across underserved and lower-income communities. However, there is limited published research on mobile market operations. The goal of this research is to identify the challenges mobile markets face and ways to potentially mitigate those challenges.

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Improving healthy food access in low-income communities continues to be a public health challenge. One strategy for improving healthy food access has been to introduce community food stores, with the mission of increasing healthy food access; however, no study has explored the experiences of different initiatives and models in opening and sustaining healthy food stores. This study used a case study approach to understand the experiences of healthy food stores in low-income communities.

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Article Synopsis
  • Adolescence is a key developmental stage where teens shift from parental control over food choices to making their own decisions and being influenced by peers.
  • A study involving focus groups with 34 adolescents aimed to uncover factors that influence their food decisions and self-directed eating behaviors in various environments.
  • The findings revealed six main influences on adolescents' food choices, highlighting that factors like social context and eating location significantly affect how much control teens feel over their food choices and their level of engagement in eating autonomy.
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Access to affordable fruit and vegetables (F&V) remains a challenge within underserved communities across the United States. Mobile produce markets (mobile markets) are a well-accepted and effective strategy for increasing F&V consumption in these communities. Mobile market organizations share similar missions that focus on food, health, and empowerment, participate in incentive programs, offer nutrition education, utilize grassroots-based marketing strategies, prioritize local produce, and sell competitively priced produce through a market style.

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Objective: Evaluate implementation of a farmers market-based fruit and vegetable incentive program.

Design: Four focus groups and 6 interviews with program participants from April through November 2017.

Setting: Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) program in Western New York.

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