This paper aims to conceptualize the dimensions of food access to enhance urban food system sustainability by analyzing the cause-effect interactions between the five dimensions and the urban food environment and using spider web diagrams to illustrate their interrelationships in terms of community perception and objectivity. Various studies have conceptualized access as a construct of five dimensions. This new expanded view supports both objective and perceived aspects of access and values the knowledge of residents through community-based participatory research, thereby providing a more complete understanding of access. This study, building on Usher’s broader themes of spatiality, objectivity and perception, analyzes the cause-effect interactions between the five dimensions and the urbanizing food environment by expanding and modeling the dimensions of access and their interactions critical to the analysis and decision-making processes of sustainable urbanizing food systems. With the use of spider web diagrams, we demonstrate the degree of interactions among the five dimensions (availability, accessibility, acceptability, accommodation, availability, and affordability), with respect to the community perception and objectivity. We used the DPSIR causal framework to analyze the cause-effect relations between the five dimensions and the DPSIR components: drivers, pressures, state, impact, and response. The five dimensions are further conceptualized for spiderweb and DPSIR for low, medium and high interactivity. The conceptualizations are applied to three case studies from the literature. This paper, additionally, integrates insights from Systems Thinking, which has been pivotal in understanding the complex, interconnected nature of sustainable food systems. Furthermore, ecosystem approaches to health, which emphasize systemic and holistic perspectives, are also considered. These approaches highlight the interdependence between ecological and human health, advocating for integrated strategies that promote both environmental and human well-being.

Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) provides a methodology that creates mutually beneficial and equitable partnerships between researchers and community people involved in positive change. Participatory Action Research (PAR) is rooted in trust, connectivity, and reciprocity to address issues and actions that remedy inequitable social, economic, and environmental problems arising from racism rooted in structural/political imbalances. In this paper, we discuss the Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) and its affiliated six week Ethnographic Field School that trains graduate students in CBPR methodology by bringing faculty, local community activists and stakeholders, and students together for mutual learning in dynamic classroom, community, and social settings. The paper offers reflections on the experience by a student, HEAT activist, local and visiting faculty, and demonstrate how a model field school based on PAR offers an empirical approach to building capacity to address power inequities in local settings and beyond.

This research sought to explore nutrition and related health issues of 151 households with children who participated in a survey addressing food access, food security, nutrition, health, food provisioning strategies, and barriers to optimal food consumption. This study explored the potential use of community food security strategies as a tool to address public health concerns through increasing fruit and vegetable intake by improving access to affordable healthy foods. Poor diet, stress, and food insecurity impacts adults and children in terms of cognitive development, mental health, and risk for costly chronic diseases. This research contextualized consumer responses within a contemporary policy and programmatic framework to explore the potential usefulness of federal, state, and local programs in the public and private sector.