Social Determinants of Health in Detroit
Social Determinants of Health in Detroit
Christina Bivins lives in Zip Code 48235 in northwest Detroit.
Population: 45,857
Unemployment rate: 16%
Michigan unemployment rate: 3.7%
Black: 94.5% |
White: 1.8%
Latino: 1.4%
Other: 2.3%
Median household income: $33,177
State median household income: $63,202
When doctors told her she couldn’t continue working for Detroit Public Schools due to a disability, Christina Bivins lost her income while serving as the primary caregiver for her 100-year-old grandmother.
“I was struggling to keep the home together,” Bivins, a lifelong Detroiter, said. Then, her brother, who had moved to Texas, suffered a severe stroke, forcing him to move back home and into Bivens’ care.
Nowadays, she said she’s “keeping my head up above water” while trying to keep those in her household fed.
Without food assistance, which Bivins has received since 2009, it would be much more difficult to feed her family. But even with that assistance, healthy and nutritional food is often out of reach. And after the pandemic, she noticed food assistance scaling back.
“The lines are getting longer,” she said. “And so it’s challenging.”
That desire to find healthier options led her to inquire about the Double Up Food Bucks program after seeing a flyer in her local grocery store.
Double Up Food Bucks offers a dollar-for-dollar match of up to $20 daily for fresh fruits and vegetables. Program participants qualify if they are enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or use a BridgeCard when making purchases.
Through the program, Bivins said she can buy things like watermelon, aloe vera, cherries, strawberries, onions, cabbage, and spinach from her favorite local grocery store, Glory Supermarket.
“I couldn’t afford those things without the program,” Bivins said. “I wouldn’t be able to try to help grandmother…and maintain her where we’re at.”
A National Institute of Health study that followed 1,000 older adults over five years found that those who ate more green, leafy vegetables experienced slower cognitive decline.
NIH is funding more than 350 clinical trials on treating dementia and Alzheimer’s with nondrug interventions, such as diet and exercise.
Associate Professor of Nutritional Sciences Kate W. Bauer told Planet Detroit that women are more likely to experience chronic health issues that stem from insufficient diets.
“Women experiencing food insecurity are more likely to have higher risk factor(s) for type two diabetes,” Bauer said. “Much of it is around that sort of anxiety of not having food.”
According to the nonprofit group Feeding America, more than 1.1 million Michigan residents are food insecure. An AARP Foundation survey found that 51% of low-income adults aged 50 to 59 were experiencing food insecurity, with more than 22% concerned about affording nutritious foods.
According to AARP’s 2018 survey, 61.9% of adults aged 65 and older were not satisfied with their diets, and only 23.7% of those felt their situation would improve in the next five to 10 years.
Bauer said AARP’s survey results show many older adults who don’t qualify for social assistance programs are the most vulnerable to food insecurity.
“We used to talk about Detroit being a food desert, and in some ways, it’s improved, but it’s still there in the neighborhoods,” Gilbert Lopez, Director of Nutrition for Detroit Area Agency on Aging, said.
The number of full-service grocery stores in the city dropped by eight from 2017 to 2020, according to the Detroit Food Policy Council’s 2020 metrics report,
Founder of Double Up Food Bucks Cassidy Strome said the program started to address affordability barriers within Detroit’s food system.
“We wanted to be able to bridge that gap between farmers and consumers and make it easier for people receiving food assistance to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables,” Strome said.
Since its founding in 2009, Double Up has grown from working with five farmers’ markets to operating at more than 250 grocery stores and farmers’ markets across the state. In Wayne County, more than 247,000 people, or 13.8% of the population, are eligible for SNAP benefits.
In 2022, SNAP recipients used SNAP/EBT benefits to purchase $6.5 million in fresh fruits and vegetables. They accessed $5.3 million in Double Up Food Bucks benefits to buy even more fresh fruits and vegetables – totaling $11.8 million spent.
Strome said program usage spiked 212% from 2019 to 2022. In response to the need, Double Up took temporary pauses in 2018, 2019, and most recently in November 2022 to maintain its budget and changed its daily spending cap from $20 per day to its current rate of $10 per day.
“We definitely had more people using the program, a lot of new people—and with Michigan being a state that received pandemic EBT, we had a lot of people who had never used EBT before,” Strome said.
Of those eligible for SNAP benefits, 17% do not participate in the program, according to Wayne State University Adjunct Professor Alex Hill.
“A lot of these programs still have significant stigma attached to them, which makes it difficult,” Hill said.
Hill started his career in public health, researching childhood obesity. He found that many areas in Detroit, dubbed “food deserts,” had food, but it was inaccessible to those who needed it most.
“I was driving around neighborhoods, and all of these people were telling me that they go grocery shopping and make food — living relatively normally in the ‘Detroit food desert,’” Hill said. “There (were) fruits and vegetables on every corner.”
According to Hill, the real problem with accessing fresh food in the city is access – getting to the store and having enough money to pay for high-quality food.
“In Detroit, issues of income and transportation are barriers to purchasing those fresh fruits and vegetables or getting them regularly and having that be a staple in your grocery shopping budget,” he said.
Strome said Double Up, which moved its operations to Detroit from Ann Arbor in March, plans to exploit Detroit’s strong networks.
“The work that we want to do is tapping into existing initiatives in the city because Detroit’s food system is so resilient,” Strome said.
One of those partnerships is with Traverse City-based Taste the Local Difference, a grassroots agency specializing in communication strategy for food networks across Michigan.
“Local grocery stores in the city of Detroit are participating and working to increase the percentage of their product that is sourced locally, and we can connect them with farmers or wholesalers selling produce,” Strome said.
Strome said 93% of sites have increased their local sourcing percentage in recent years, with the largest coming from southwest Detroit’s Garden Fresh.
“A lot of what we’re having to do is talk to the retailer and help them figure out how to communicate their needs to each other,” Strome said.
Bivins said the Double Up Food Bucks program is crucial to her ability to keep her household going.
“It’s just me trying to hold things together as much as possible,” she said. “Double Up Food Bucks has helped.”
Amelia Benavides-Colón is a southwest Detroit journalist with a passion for community storytelling. She has previously reported on breaking news, business, and features desks at The Detroit News, Crain’s Detroit Business, and Outlier Media — contributing and breaking news vital to her community and its residents.
She will be graduating with her degree in Journalism and Global Studies from WSU in 2024 with plans to pursue a career in national reporting with a focus on solutions-based journalism