There is much recent interest in improving the food environment to reduce risk for chronic disease by increasing the accessibility of healthy foods.  While corner store-based nutrition interventions have emerged as a potential strategy, the feasibility of such programs has rarely been assessed.

Baltimore Healthy Stores (BHS) is a community-based program to improve accessibility to and availability of healthy foods for low-income African Americans.  In 2006-2007, we conducted a 10-month corner store-based feasibility trial in Baltimore city.  Using a quasi-experimental study design, seven corner stores and two supermarkets received 10 month interventions, and six corner stores and two supermarkets served as comparison.  All the corner stores were owned and operated by Korean American merchants.

The intervention strategies for Korean American storeowners included: 1) incentives to minimize the potential of financial risk of the stores; 2) guidelines to encourage positive relationships with community members; 3) posters related to food purchasing, stocking and placing to stock promoted healthy foods effectively; and 4) nutrition education to ensure longer sustainability of the program by improving nutrition related knowledge of storeowners. All these materials were prepared or delivered in Korean.

The intervention strategies for African American consumers were comprised of in-store materials such as posters, educational displays, and fliers and shelf labels, in-store activities such as taste tests and incentives (coupons, incentive cards, giveaways).  Interventionists visited each of the intervention stores on a weekly basis to conduct taste tests, distribute promoted food samples and giveaways, and interact with customers to explain nutritional messages.  The selection of foods for promotion was based on 24-hour dietary recalls from community members that identified foods that contributed the most energy, sugar and fat to the diet.

BHS was evaluated at the store and consumer level through interviews and structured questionnaires, which included pre-post assessment of store food stocking.  The program was found to be culturally and economically acceptable to store owners and consumers.  Analyses of process and impact data are currently under way and will be submitted for review in peer-reviewed journals in late 2008.