Community Gardens, Investments, and Health Outcomes

• In Event: 3129 - Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 25. Places, Housing, and Health

Abstract

There is consistent evidence that community gardens are health resources. They improve a wide variety of health outcomes for participants, including diet quality, through increased fruit and vegetable consumption and preferences and reduced food costs. However, social inequalities have been shown to serve as fundamental causes of health disparities through other types of health resources. Social inequalities have been shown to impact the abilities, through multiple mechanisms, of both individuals and health resource institutions to invest in the services those institutions provide, disproportionately increasing the positive health benefits of services provided in more socially advantaged communities. Similarly, fundamental cause theory suggests that social inequalities may operate through community gardens to maintain unequal health outcomes through the abilities of individuals and community gardens to invest in their services, like food production. This paper considers this suggestion by asking: (1) how do individual and garden investments in food production influence dietary health among community gardeners, and (2) how do race, class, and gender shape individual and/or garden investments in gardening and food production? Findings suggest that community gardens may not be a mechanism through which racial or class-based inequalities impact health outcomes, and that community gardens may be more impactful in increasing food access for participants of color and women. Community gardens may, therefore, be good programs for improving food access inequalities in particular and health inequalities more generally.

Author

• Katie Lynn Cantwell Butterfield, UC Merced