Dollar stores have increasingly become an important source of food items, especially for low-income households and those living in rural areas, which has implications for public health. In this emerging field, we are one of the first teams to study this topic, and in 2022, we convened a workshop of leading dollar stores experts to identify pressing research areas. To learn more about the event, our dollar store collaborators, and the paper published as a result of the workshop, click here. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Our previous research found that dollar stores are the fastest growing food retailers, especially in rural areas (Feng, 2023). We have also found that while the foods sold in dollar stores are less healthy, the overall basket of foods purchased by those who shop at dollar stores is similar to those who don\u2019t shop at dollar stores, suggesting that dollar stores may not be harming diets (Feng, 2025a). In addition, our scoping review synthesizes the research on dollar stores up until 2025 (Feng, 2025b). <\/p>\n\n\n\n We are currently working on further identifying how consumers use dollar stores as a food shopping destination and exploring interventions to promote healthier purchases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The other aspect of our research focuses on evaluating policies that relate to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and how these policies help or hinder the nutrition and health of low-income Americans. Previous research on this topic has focused on the impact of administrative burden on program participation, where we found that decreasing administrative burden can increase access to services (Fox, 2022). In a study on the health impact of the Able Bodied Adults Without Dependents (ABAWD) work requirement in the SNAP program, we found that reimposing ABAWD work requirement leads to a higher incidence of unhealthy days but no change in employment (Feng, 2022). <\/p>\n\n\n\n We are currently working on identifying the impact of reimposing ABAWD work requirements on food purchases and ABAWD policies\u2019 relationship with other SNAP policies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dollar stores and food access Dollar stores have increasingly become an important source of food items, especially for low-income households and those living in rural areas, which has implications for public health. In this emerging field, we are one of the first teams to study this topic, and in 2022, we convened a workshop of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2097,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-15","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chomp-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chomp-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chomp-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chomp-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2097"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chomp-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chomp-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chomp-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chomp-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}SNAP policies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n