Tag: targeted universalism

Targeted Universalism Step 2: Assess general population performance relative to the universal goal

a photograph of a semi-urban city. multi-colored train cars stretch from the upper-left to lower-right of the picture. the train is mostly boxcars, though there is a black tanker in the middle. the tracks run next to a few buildings on one side. they’re all about five stories tall. on the other side of the track is a bike/run path that curves slightly to the left. a single cyclist is on this side of the tracks. if there were a grocery store in one of those buildings, that person would not be in a food desert. but they’d have a pretty dangerous trip if they wanted to eat something. i was watching a train video while i wrote this and decided to just go with it.

Awhile ago I wrote about targeted universalism. There are five steps to creating a plan. I’m using the Othering and Belonging Institute‘s primer on the subject.

Welcome back to the series! This post’s focus is on the second step of creating a targeted universalism framework. In Step 1, I established this as my goal:

Everyone should have access to food that is free. The food should be nutritious and appropriate to them. The food should be accessible within a 15 minutes walk.

Now that we have a universal goal, we have to assess how close the general population is to that goal. A big note here: the general performance measure is a starting point, not a baseline. It can help us understand exactly how much of the general population we need to move. We’ll later compare the relative performance of specific groups to the general population. Again, not as a way to close the gap between groups, but to create distinct strategies so each group can achieve 100%.

performance measures

In step 1, I created a universal goal using three factors: wealth, dietary needs, and location. I don’t have the data handy to create a true baseline, but I can imagine how I’d do it. I’ll first start with location.

Location

The location part of our universal goal is that food is available within a 15 minute walk of every person. I can approximate this using the USDA’s data on food deserts. In 2009 they published “Access to Affordable and Nutritious Food: Measuring and Understanding Food Deserts and Their Consequences (pdf).” This report popularized the concept of food deserts as a measure of food access. For urban areas, a census tract is a “food desert” if the center of the tract is more than 1 mile from a large grocery store. The food desert concept has its flaws. Small produce stands don’t count as supermarkets but offer fresh produce in that area. And a mile as the crow flies doesn’t consider that people may have to take a more circuitous route to get there.

For rural areas, a food desert means a grocery store or supermarket is more than 10 miles away. Most people can’t walk 10 miles one way to buy groceries, but this measure is for the general population. In the same way, the average human can walk a mile in 15-20 minutes. But that doesn’t mean everyone can get there in that amount of time. Here again we encounter a limitation that we can address in Step 4.

The USDA found that 23.5 million people live in a low-income area defined as a food desert. The population of the u.s. in 2009 was 306.8M. That means 7.7% of the country must travel more than 1 mile (urban) or 10 miles (rural) to shop for groceries.

Dietary Needs

Having a grocery store nearby is important, but what if the store doesn’t carry the food you need to eat? For example, the Food Empowerment Project conducted a study in Santa Clara County, CA. Shining a Light on the Valley of Heart’s Delight (pdf) studied food access in low-income and communities of color. They found that grocery stores offered less variety in low-income communities.

Non-organic produce was available at 33.7% of the high-income retailers they studied. In low-income neighborhoods, only 17.3% of stores carried fresh produce. For those of us (me again) seeking non-dairy products, 0.0% of stores in low-income areas carried these items. In high-income areas, 6.1% of stores carried these items. We must address these disparities as we start to understand specific communities’ needs.

Wealth

The data I started to gather for the first two factors are important for sure. But there’s of course a greater gateway to accessing the food we want to eat. People need to be able to afford the food. Access alone is not enough. I’ll refer to another USDA study, Characteristics and Influential Factors of Food Deserts (pdf). The earlier study “found that, on average, low-income and minority populations were closer to supermarkets than higher income individuals and non-Hispanic Whites.” If you can’t afford to buy food, why would it matter how close you are to it?

The USDA defines a household as food insecure if they have limited or uncertain access to food. In Washington, 849K people are food insecure, or 11.5% of the total state population. Nationally, 35.2M people are defined as food insecure.

conclusion

So with this information, I can cobble together some performance measures. If this were a real framework, we could create a more complete performance measure. But for now, we have a good idea of where we are as a society. 23 million people have to travel more than 15 minutes to find a grocery store. Access to appropriate foods depends on the area where you live. And 849K people in Washington (35.2M nationally) don’t have the food they need to thrive.

We have a lot of work to do! Step 3 is coming soon.

Targeted Universalism Step 1: Establish a Universal Goal

A grocery store aisle of boxed cereals, stretching from one end of the photo to another. I grew up on malt-o-meal cereals as a kid. These were the generic version of the popular but more-expensive cereals. I started buying some name-brand cereals when I got older. As a treat. They really do taste different, though!

Awhile ago I wrote about targeted universalism. There are five steps to creating a plan. I’m using the Othering and Belonging Institute‘s primer on the subject.

To use the targeted universalism framework, we first need to establish a goal. The goal must be a broadly-shared understanding of a common problem. Once the problem is commonly-held, the collective defines their aspiration. In this case, I would define the problem as: not everyone has enough to eat. Food access depends on a person’s wealth, their dietary needs, and their location.

understanding the problem
If a person, or a person’s family has enough money, they can afford high quality food. If a person’s family has less available wealth, they may have to eat lower-quality food. They may need to accept whatever food they can get for free. It’s not universal. Get it?? That’s half of the plan’s name! The other half comes later.

Food offered at food banks (or even at discount stores) works for some people, but not everyone. People who can’t digest gluten or lactose may find their options limited. Same with people who are vegan, vegetarian, or don’t eat specific animals for religious reasons. People who don’t like the taste or texture of a certain food. For people with money, these are all valid reasons to reject food. But when a person doesn’t have money, society tells them to accept what they can get.

Now imagine a person who lives far from a nearby town or grocery store. Or a person who uses a wheelchair or scooter in a city with uneven or dangerous sidewalks. Or a person who must use a bus to travel on pre-set routes. I recently read the story of Dashrath Manjhi. His wife needed medical help but the Gelhour hills separated them from the nearest town. The small mountain range forced him to travel 40 miles around them to the medical center. By the time he returned with a doctor, his wife had died. In his pain, he spent the next 22 years carving a road through the mountain to connect his village to the town. This experience is not universal! Providing universal access to food means we must account for a person’s geography as well.

setting the collective aspiration
The Targeted Universalism primer describes how to establish a collective. In building the table, they recommend forming a group like the one we use in an advice process. The participants should include, from the start:- People most affected by the problem. Go out of your way to include people who are often excluded from these types of decisions. Include them in a way that honors them as individuals with their own power and choice whether to take part. I’ll summarize:

  • people who receive benefits from the proposed change.
  • people tasked with implementing the change.
  • people tasked with documentation.
  • people with an expert understanding of the issues.

Since we’re talking about food access, I would look to people covered by the limitations described earlier. I would include:

  • people whose first or primary language isn’t english.
  • people with physical disabilities.
  • people of different races and cultures.
  • people who know how to cook, and people who don’t.
  • people who sell groceries.
  • people who own farms, and people who work farms.

I expect the collective will grow and change over time as we engage more people in this work.

This collective would definitely come up with more limits to their food access than I have. But for this step I’ll use the three factors I named above: wealth, dietary needs, and location.

My universal goal would be:
Everyone should have access to food that is free. The food should be nutritious and appropriate to them. The food should be accessible within a 15 minutes walk.

I’ll get around to Step 2 at some point.