Food Access and Insecurity in Adults with Mobility Disabilities

People with disabilities experience greater risk of food insecurity compared to people without disabilities. Lower incomes and higher relative expenses are often understood as the major causes of this inequality. Some scholars have also posited that people with mobility disabilities (PWMD) experience greater difficulty procuring or preparing food. Yet, limited research examines upstream factors related to food insecurity risk, lived experiences of food access, or environments that present access barriers among PWMD. Responding to these knowledge gaps, I sought to examine place-based influences on the relationship between mobility disability and food insecurity, questioning environmental, political, and institutional contexts that impact economic and physical access to food. Throughout my work, I use different theoretical approaches to conceptualize disability including, the social model, a critical ableist perspective, and an assemblage perspective. In adopting these perspectives, I challenge how bodies and mobility are typically understood in the food desert literature. My dissertation contains a scoping review followed by a series of empirical chapters set within a mixed-methods research design. In my scoping review of the literature, I discovered an important and widespread association between disability and food insecurity. In an analysis of microdata from the Canadian Community Health Survey, I examined sociodemographic and geographic risk factors of food insecurity among people with mobility impairment. Across Canada, I found an important inequality in food insecurity between people with and without mobility impairment. Province was associated with risk of food insecurity among people with mobility impairments, potentially reflecting different political and institutional contexts. I then conducted a qualitative study, using mobile go-along interviews with PWMD in Toronto, Canada, to understand lived experiences of food access. I found that food access was often restricted for PWMD related to different systems (e.g., social assistance) and places of access, on food trips, at home, and in food destinations. In subsequent research, I showed how the home acts as an important site shaping physical, social, and economic access to food. Together, my findings suggest the need to address socioeconomic disadvantage among PWMD while considering disabling contexts that limit access to functional housing, outdoor environments, transport systems, and food destinations.Ph.D