Negotiating the Local Food Environment: The Lived Experience of Food Access for Low-Income People Living With HIV/AIDS

Abstract

Good Eats was a 10-week community-based research workshop series on food security for persons living with HIV/AIDS in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, Canada. This is a population that is very food insecure and for whom access to nutritious food is critical for health. We suggest that using methods that engage marginalized populations in the research process can contribute to our understanding of food insecurity in a local food environment. In this example, although there are a number of charitable food programs in the neighborhood, factors such as food provider regulations, inadequate housing, and drug addictions contribute to food insecurity for this population.

Keywords:

• HIV/AIDS
• food security
• community-based research

The authors acknowledge the supporters of and contributors to the Good Eats project. Thank you to Coco Culbertson for her vision for this project, Tanya Palazzo for recording and transcribing the workshops, and Diane Brown and Rani Wangsawidjaya for leading the cooking sessions. We also acknowledge the funding support received through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research HIV/AIDS Community-Based Research Program. Finally, we thank the frontline workers at the LifeSkills Centre for their support and the participants of Good Eats for their courage, humor, and friendship during the workshop and beyond.