Indicator PI.8.b Proportion of retail food establishments that accept state/federal food assistance programs
*EBT = electronic benefit transfer
Data Source
State of California - Office of Systems Integration (OSI), Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) Project, Retail/Benefit Access Support.
Data catagorized using infoUSA's proprietary six-digit SIC and eight-digit NAICS industry codes from data purchased from ESRI from a comprehensive list of businesses licensed from infoUSA.
Map prepared by City and County of San Francisco, Department of Public Health, Environmental Health Section using ArcGIS software.
Table data is presented by planning neighborhood. While planning neighborhoods are larger geographic areas than census tracts, census tracts do not always lie completely within a planning neighborhood. SFDPH used ArcGIS software and a 'centroids within' methodology to convert census blocks to geographic mean center points. We then assigned census blocks to planning neighborhoods based on the spatial location of those geographic mean center points and calculated the planning neighborhood totals for the table.
Detailed information regarding geographic units of analysis, their definitions, and their boundaries can be found in the HDMT at the following links:
http://www.thehdmt.org/etc/Geographic_Units_of_Analysis.September_2009.pdf
http://www.thehdmt.org/data_map_methods.php
Explanation and Limitations
The map represents all Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) establishments based on a July 2009 EBT report received from the State of California - Office of Systems Integration (OSI) - Electronic Benefit. The San Francisco Department of Public Health classified each establishment using the North American Industry Classification System in a dataset of all San Francisco businesses supplied by ESRI through infoUSA's database. Below is a description of all fields:
Number of "heathly food retail"* establishments accepting EBT = Healthy food retail includes supermarkets, produce stores and farmers markets which accept EBT.
% of total "healthy food retail"* establishments accepting EBT = Total number of healthy food retail (supermarkets, produce stores and farmers markets) in San Francisco divided by the number of healthy food retail which accepts EBT.
Number of "unhealthy food retail"* establishments accepting EBT = Unhealthy food retail includes fast food outlets and convenience stores which accept EBT.
% of total "unhealthy food retail" establishments accepting EBT = Total number of unhealthy food retail (fast food outlets and convenience stores) in San Francisco divided by the number of unhealthy food retails which accepts EBT.
Other EBT establishments = all other establishments not included in the "healthy food retail" or “unhealthy food retail" categories, such as a bakery, donut/coffee shops, food health supplement stores, gasoline stations, gourmet foods, health and diet foods, hotels and motels, juice bars, liquor stores, meat markets, non classifiable, other grocery stores, pharmacies, rehabilitation services, seafood markets, specialties stores, tobacco stores and variety stores.
Total EBT establishments = all EBT establishments in San Francisco.
The Food Stamp Program has been called the "first line of defense" against hunger. It is a federally-mandated State-supervised, and county-operated government program designed to eliminate hunger in the United States. Since 2002, California began converting food stamp benefits from paper coupons to electronic benefit transfer (EBT). EBT represents the largest amount of federal funds earmarked for the nutrition of low income people. All individuals eligible for the program are entitled to participate in the program. Eligibility for EBT is determined by two things: household gross income and the amount of household resources. According to a 2007 San Francisco Food Bank Report, in San Franisco150,000 individuals live at or below 150% of the federal poverty line and live with a daily threat of hunger.
In 2007, a family of four falls below 150% of the federal poverty line if it earns less than $30,975 per year. However, with San Francisco’s high cost of living, where over 16% of renters are spending more than 50% of their income for housing many low-income families earn well above this figure but are still in need of food assistance.
To accept food stamp EBT cards, merchants must be authorized for food stamp acceptance by the USDA Food Stamp Program. For a store to be eligible to accept EBT the store must sell food for home preparation and consumption and meet at least one of the criteria : 1) offer for sale at least three different varieties of food in each of the following four staple food groups, with perishable foods in at least two categories, on a daily basis: bread and grains, dairy, fruits and vegetables, meat, poultry, fish OR 2) at least 50% of the total sales (e.g., food, non-food, services, etc.) at the store must be from the sale of eligible staple food. In 2004, the State approved Food Stamp regulations that allowed elderly, disabled, and homeless households to use food stamp benefits to buy prepared restaurant meals.
Why is this a Community Health Indicator?
Different communities and populations have very different access to healthy and unhealthy foods. Increasingly, access to reliable transportation goes hand-in-hand with access to healthy foods. Food stamp recipients may lack access to larger stores, reducing the availability of nutritious food options. Underutilization of EBT is one likely reason why low-income households continue to suffer from insufficient and unhealthy food supplies.