Nuestro Valor: Increasing healthier food access for rural Latino communities through a food retail intervention

Project Abstract Diets low in fruits and vegetables are associated with chronic disease disparities for Latinos living in rural areas. Furthermore, in rural areas, structural and social factors like low wages, limited public transportation, and inability to access social services, can limit access to healthy food for Latinos. Despite these barriers to

healthy foods, many Latinos regularly shop at retail food stores (tiendas), which provide access to culturally desired foods and services. El Valor is an effective, culturally tailored retail food store (tiendas) intervention to promote the consumption of fruits and vegetables among Latino shoppers. This theory-informed, multi-level

intervention addresses customer behavior, social, and structural factors at the tienda. We propose to shift our knowledge on adapting evidence-based interventions such as El Valor to rural areas by incorporating social determinants of health and partnering with community leaders and members to tailor this intervention for

Latinos living in rural communities, tiendas, and the environmental factors that impact these communities. Using a hybrid type I cluster-RCT design, we aim to augment and adapt the El Valor intervention for Latinos living and shopping in tiendas in rural communities; to assess the implementation of the adapted El Valor

intervention on access to fruits and vegetables at the tienda level; and to evaluate the effectiveness of the adapted El Valor intervention on Latino customers’ consumption of fruits and vegetables. We engage in a community-based participatory research process to create new knowledge on translating evidence-based

interventions. Latinos living in rural communities and advance our understanding of addressing social and structural drivers of health to reduce health disparities while maximizing effectiveness and external validity. This research aims to accelerate the implementation of evidence-based interventions to promote health,

reduce health disparities, and contribute to health equity for Latinos in the United States.