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Overview of Participatory Mapping of Food Environment. The Participatory Mapping tool is designed to be conducted prior to the other food environment assessments included in the Food Environment Toolbox to help inform which tools to use as well as the sampling approach for a given study. As part of a focus group discussion conducted with community members who are familiar with the different food access points within the community, the Participatory Mapping tool guides participants to draw a map of the different wild, cultivated, built, kin and community, and supplemental food assistance spaces they access food from in the community. The tool guides participants to describe which foods they access from those spaces and why. The focus group guide has been informed by the participatory mapping literature (Cochrane & Corbett, 2020; Corbett, 2009), previous studies conducted by our team using this method (Downs et al., 2019; 2022; 2024), and the USAID Advancing Nutrition Guidelines for Market-Based Food Environment Assessments (2023). This tool provides insight into the different types of food environments that communities access, where and how they acquire different types of foods, and how these change across seasons and time.

Participatory Mapping Cover Page

Participatory Mapping Tool

Participatory Mapping Instructions

Participatory Mapping Tables

Example of map from participatory mapping