  When it comes to preventive healthcare, place matters. It is increasingly
clear that social factors, particularly reliable access to healthy food, are as
determinant to health and health equity as medical care. However, food access
studies often only present one-dimensional measurements of access. We
hypothesize that food access is a multidimensional concept and evaluated
Penchansky and Thomas's 1981 definition of access. In our approach, we identify
ten variables contributing to food access in the City of Chicago and use
principal component analysis to identify vulnerable populations with low
access. Our results indicate that within the urban environment of the case
study site, affordability is the most important factor in low food
accessibility, followed by urban youth, reduced mobility, and higher immigrant
population.
