ArticleCanadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique2026
Examining disparities in the accessibility of unhealthy food vendors in school neighbourhoods across Ontario: Would the implementation of new distance-based regulations improve equity?
Article in Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
objectivesThis study evaluates associations between school-level disadvantage (i.e., relative socioeconomic circumstances of student populations) and the accessibility of unhealthy food vendors near secondary schools across Ontario, Canada. It also examines how vendor distribution would change following the implementation of new distance-based regulations.
methodsWe identified and summed all unhealthy food vendors within successive 100 m network buffers around secondary schools up to 1600 m, and applied inverse distance weighting, giving greater weight to vendors located closer to schools than those farther away. We used the Jonckheere-Terpstra test to determine significant differences and negative binomial regression to evaluate the association between the accessibility of unhealthy food vendors in school neighbourhoods and school-level disadvantage, defined by the percentage of immigrant, non-English-speaking, and low-income students. We investigated five regulatory scenarios across the entire province and by level of urbanicity, removing food vendors within 100 m, 200 m, 300 m, 400 m, and 500 m of schools, and repeating our analyses for the broader neighbourhood food environment (i.e., 1600 m from school).
resultsAdjusted models show that unhealthy food vendors were inequitably distributed across school neighbourhoods, with more disadvantaged schools having significantly more unhealthy food vendors within most buffer zones than the least disadvantaged schools. Also, these inequities would persist following the implementation of hypothetical distance-based regulations.
conclusionDistance-based regulations which restrict retail locations around all schools may not be an effective tool for ameliorating socioeconomic disparities in unhealthy food accessibility across school neighbourhoods or, by extension, addressing broader concerns related to adolescents' dietary behaviours.
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