Food insecurity is rarely distributed evenly across a community. Some neighborhoods face significantly higher risk than others. However, without granular, locally grounded data, knowing exactly where to direct limited resources can be challenging. To help close that gap, Furman’s Shi Institute partnered with the Institute for the Advancement of Community Health (IACH) and LiveWell Greenville to build a Food Insecurity Index, an interactive map showing where food insecurity risk is highest across all of Greenville County.
Seeing the Whole Picture
Because direct measures of food insecurity aren’t available at the neighborhood level, the research team built a composite index using five census-based risk factors: the share of single-parent households, households without a vehicle, adults without a high school diploma, low-income residents who recently moved, and median income. Each census tract receives an aggregate score (the darker the shading on the map, the higher the food insecurity risk). Nicholtown ranks highest, followed by City View, Gantt, Conestee, Mauldin, and more than a dozen other neighborhoods across the county.
Working with the United Way of Greenville County, the team replaced census tract numbers with actual neighborhood names, making the data far easier for community members and practitioners to connect to places they know. The map also layers in the locations of grocery stores, food pantries, farmers markets, and vendors accepting WIC and SNAP, alongside additional census indicators: households below the poverty line, individuals with disabilities, and families with young children. The result is a tool that puts resource gaps in direct context with the communities that need them most.
Putting the Map to Work
The map quickly proved its value in ways the team hadn’t fully anticipated. LiveWell Greenville used it to identify areas of unexpectedly high food insecurity—places that had not previously been on the radar. They conducted focus groups in those communities and surfaced a key finding: local faith institutions were a critical and underutilized asset. Several churches in those areas have since established food pantries, directly expanding the county’s food support infrastructure in places the data revealed needed it most.
When the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically increased food insecurity across the country, the index proved equally valuable. Organizations across Greenville County used it to identify where expanded food resources were most urgently needed and to guide an emergency response at a moment when the stakes were highest.
A project of the Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities and the Institute for the Advancement of Community Health at Furman University, in partnership with LiveWell Greenville.