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Abstract
Under the prevalence of obesity among the United States, there has been growing attention on food environment and health. Past research used various methods to measure individuals spatial access to healthy food. However, less is known about how proximity matters to participants grocery store choices and how they navigate the choices available to them. This study examines the grocery store choice of SNAP-Ed participants in Clayton, DeKalb and Fulton counties in Georgia, how their proximity to preferred grocery stores relates to individual characteristics, household food environment and neighborhood socio-economic characteristics. The results indicate that proximity didnt seem to be a significant factor influencing participants grocery store choices, especially on bigger chains. Two measures of proximity (network distance and travel time by car) are correlated and have slight differences in modeling the relationships between individual and neighborhood socio-economic characteristics. Also, BMI does not vary by store choice.