North Carolina’s HBCU Students Don’t Have Enough Access To Healthy Foods

WUNC | By Stacia Brown,

Published August 11, 2020 at 3:00 PM EDT

a green lawn on the campus of St. Augustine's University — St. Augustine's University is one of the ten HBCUs in the state where healthy food options are limited in the neighborhoods around campus.

A new study shows that healthy food options are limited in the communities around each of the state’s 10 historically Black colleges and universities.

Convenience stores, liquor stories, bakeries and candy shops are more plentiful within the 15-mile walking radius of each campus than grocery stores and markets with fresh produce. According to the research, 76% of the 1,414 stores offered unfavorable options, compared to just 24% that were favorable. Host Frank Stasio talks to Derrick Sauls, department chair of public health and exercise science at St. Augustine’s University, about the limited healthy food access around his own university, as well as his contributions to the larger study.

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Stacia Brown

Stacia L. Brown is a writer and audio storyteller who has worked in public media since 2016, when she partnered with the Association of Independents in Radio and Baltimore's WEAA 88.9 to create The Rise of Charm City, a narrative podcast that centered community oral histories. She has worked for WAMU’s daily news radio program, 1A, as well as WUNC’s The State of Things. Stacia was a producer for WUNC's award-winning series, Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon and a co-creator of the station's first children's literacy podcast, The Story Stables. She served as a senior producer for two Ten Percent Happier podcasts, Childproof and More Than a Feeling. In early 2023, she was interim executive producer for WNYC’s The Takeaway.

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Frank Stasio

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.

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