Food access is a transdisciplinary topic that may or may not be included in college curricula. Central to this concept is the notion of a “food desert,” or an area without access to food outlets that sell nutritious foods at affordable prices. The U.S. Department of Agriculture provided competitive grants to higher education institutions to develop course modules that raise awareness of the issue of food deserts among future decision makers and equip them with the problem-solving skills needed to address this social problem. In this paper, we describe the outcome of one such educational grant, a course module focused on the introduction of food deserts and the factors involved in addressing the problem of access to healthy food for lower socioeconomic segments of the population.

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