Harvesting Health: The Role of City Policy in Urban Agriculture and the Downstream Effects on Youth

Contextualizing environmental health within the socio-ecological framework, acknowledges the diverse factors at play in the environment-human dynamic. The research design, methods, and study populations of each chapter vary to match the socio-ecological level(s) of focus and reinforce the translational and interdisciplinary nature of this research. Chapter 2 examines the policy-supports for urban agriculture using a mixed-methods case-study of the City of Charleston, SC to understand how municipal policy (societal) impacts urban agriculture implementation (community) and what impact this has on residents (relationship and individual). Chapter 3 centers on the potential impact of urban farms (community) and their programming (community and relationship) on the youth they serve (individual). This research uses a mixed methods case-control and repeated cross-sectional designs to study how if at all an urban farm-to-school program influences youths’ perceptions and consumption of fruits and vegetables. Chapter 4 narrows focus to study the pattern of fruit and vegetable consumption, ultra-processed food consumption, and artificial food coloring exposure in a small sample of youth (individual). This continues the study of downstream implications of urban agriculture to look at individual diet patterns and food additive exposure. Chapter 5 provides a summary and conclusion of the research contained in this dissertation and outlines lessons learned and suggestions for future research in the area of urban agriculture.