Research Rotation – Week 1 Journal

Dates of rotation: (Monday) September 11, 2017 – (Friday) September 15, 2017

Location: CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute

 

Activities & Assignments:

• Introduction to Supermarket Research Project by Dr. Nevin Cohen (preceptor). The project is about finding other ways to define food access and the factors that affect supermarket access in NYC.
  • Most of the studies conducted regarding this topic (NYC community profiles) used the criteria of square footage or distance to come up with rankings of which supermarkets are most accessed by people in NYC.
  • Cohen gave me the task of coming up with other possible criteria to rank supermarket access. Dr. Cohen showed me the supermarket database that he and his team had put together which contained information such as supermarket name, address, corporate owner, display name, license number, square footage, etc.  I was asked to familiarize myself with this database since this was the database I was going to be working with.
  • I was also asked to look over the community district profiles compiled together by the New York City Department of City Planning. These profiles gave me a snapshot of each community district (population, supermarket square footage, disease incidence, fruit and vegetable consumption, etc.)
• Continued looking through the supermarket database. Data such as square footage, license numbers, and name ID.
  • Missing square footage was initially filled in by taking the average of the stores owned by the same corporation that already had square footage information.
• Ranking criteria were determined by Dr. Cohen and myself. These were the ranking criteria chosen:
  • # of supermarkets/community district
  • # of supermarkets + pharmacies/community district
  • # of supermarkets + pharmacies + dollar stores/community district
• Attended the bi-weekly staff meeting where the faculty discussed their current projects and welcomed suggestions/input not only from other faculty members but also research assistants and interns.
• Attended a forum called Litigation as a Strategy for Defending and Advancing Food Policy.
  • Panelists discussed how litigation can be helpful to changing food policy and how they have personally used this method to affect some change in food policies.
• Continued ranking sq/ft per 100 people, supermarket nutrition program/community district, checked square footage of supermarkets, pharmacies, and dollar stores to check for possible anomalies (closed stores, missing square footage).
• Continued ranking by supermarket nutrition services/community district and started calculating store revenue/community district.
  • Used Food Trade News to search for reported revenues by company.
  • Searched store websites for information regarding their nutrition programs.

Comments / Thoughts / Challenges:

Challenges:

• Becoming familiar with the data.
• Coming up with possible ranking criteria.

Limitations:

• Stores are constantly changing. They either close, change ownership, or change their display name.  The only way to find out about these changes is to manually look through the list and google or call establishments.
• Another limitation found was that the available square footage data is not very accurate. Old data from google maps does not show new stores that have opened in a specific address. Some stores have their license # registered in AGM as 1 specific address but it looks like they occupy the spaces next to that address so the square footage is not always accurate.

Learning Objectives Met:

CRDN 1.5: Conduct projects using appropriate research methods, ethical procedures

and data analysis.

CRDN 1.6: Incorporate critical thinking skills in overall practice.

CRDN 2.3: Demonstrate active participation, teamwork and contributions in group settings.

CRDN 2.4: Function as a member of inter-professional teams.

CRDN 2.9: Participate in professional and community organizations.

CRDN 2.10: Demonstrate professional attributes in all areas of practice.

Total Clock Hours: 40 ½ hours