Dr. Elizabeth Fox, an assistant professor of practice in the Department of Public & Ecosystem Health, recently co-authored a paper published in the journal Appetite that examines the drivers of food choice among women in Nairobi, Kenya. Fox’s co-author, Dr. Shauna Downs is an assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Public Health.

The paper found that income and the price of food were among the most salient factors that influenced food decisions, and that women often made trade-offs between food affordability, time, and nutrition. The importance of certain factors, such as individual preferences, household preferences, and food quality, were found to vary by women’s age group.

The findings suggest that interventions targeting individual factors, such as income and perceptions about the food environment, need to be combined with those that target elements of external food environments, such as prices, to help women overcome making trade-offs in their food choice decisions.

“Applied ethnography is a powerful approach to understanding people’s lived experiences, including their values and what they find to be important, and can be used to inform and center community needs in public health practice,” says Fox.