Mobile Food Market Cluster Randomized Trial

Summary

Mobile food markets have been proposed as a strategy for mitigating health disparities related to poor nutrition and diet/weight-related health conditions because they bring low-cost, healthy food directly to underserved populations. Full-service mobile markets may improve multiple aspects of the diet by providing foods to meet all dietary needs through a convenient one-stop shop. The full-service mobile market to be tested (Twin Cities Mobile Market) sells nutritious and staple foods from a bus that regularly visits low-income neighborhoods. Foods are sold at prices \~10% below those of grocery stores. SNAP/EBT is accepted, and a state-funded fruit/vegetable incentive program (Market Bucks) is available to shoppers. Working in partnership with our community team members, we will enroll 12 total sites and recruit 22 participants per site (N=264). We will collect baseline data and randomize sites to either receive the full-service mobile market intervention or serve as the waitlist control. We will then implement the full-service mobile market at intervention sites, follow participants for 6 months, and collect follow-up data. After follow-up data collection, waitlist control sites will receive the full-service mobile market intervention. Diet quality will be assessed through dietary recall interviews, food insecurity will be assessed by survey, and fruit and vegetable purchases will be measured by collecting one month of food purchase tracking forms at baseline and follow-up data collection. Analyses will determine whether the full-service mobile market changes diet quality, food security, and food purchasing outcomes.

Conditions

• Healthy Diet
• Nutrition, Healthy

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Full-service market intervention

Full-service mobile market implementation: the market will visit intervention sites weekly. The market will carry items from all food groups including fresh, frozen and canned fruits and vegetables, whole grains, dairy/ dairy substitutes, proteins (e.g., frozen meat/fish, beans, eggs), and dry goods (e.g., cooking oil, spices). Prices on the market are affordable, approximately 10% lower than grocery stores.

OTHER

No intervention

No intervention

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Minnesota

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Melissa Horning, PhD, RN, PHN · University of Minnesota

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2023-01-12

Primary Completion

2025-10-09

Completion

2025-10-24

Countries

• United States

Study Locations