Mobile Food Market Cluster Randomized Trial

NCT ID: NCT05672186

Last Updated: 2025-10-31

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 262 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2023-01-12
• Study Completion Date: 2025-10-24

Brief Summary

Mobile food markets have been proposed as a strategy for mitigating health disparities related to poor nutrition and diet/weight-related health conditions because they bring low-cost, healthy food directly to underserved populations. Full-service mobile markets may improve multiple aspects of the diet by providing foods to meet all dietary needs through a convenient one-stop shop. The full-service mobile market to be tested (Twin Cities Mobile Market) sells nutritious and staple foods from a bus that regularly visits low-income neighborhoods. Foods are sold at prices ~10% below those of grocery stores. SNAP/EBT is accepted, and a state-funded fruit/vegetable incentive program (Market Bucks) is available to shoppers. Working in partnership with our community team members, we will enroll 12 total sites and recruit 22 participants per site (N=264). We will collect baseline data and randomize sites to either receive the full-service mobile market intervention or serve as the waitlist control. We will then implement the full-service mobile market at intervention sites, follow participants for 6 months, and collect follow-up data. After follow-up data collection, waitlist control sites will receive the full-service mobile market intervention. Diet quality will be assessed through dietary recall interviews, food insecurity will be assessed by survey, and fruit and vegetable purchases will be measured by collecting one month of food purchase tracking forms at baseline and follow-up data collection. Analyses will determine whether the full-service mobile market changes diet quality, food security, and food purchasing outcomes.

Conditions

Healthy Diet; Nutrition, Healthy

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

Waitlist control

Participants in low-income neighborhoods and/or adjacent to low-income housing randomized to the control group will be placed on a waitlist to receive market service after follow- up data collection is complete.

Group Type: SHAM_COMPARATOR

No intervention

Intervention Type: OTHER

No intervention

Experimental group

Participants in low-income neighborhoods and/or adjacent to low-income housing randomized to the intervention group will receive the full-service market intervention following randomization.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Full-service market intervention

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Full-service mobile market implementation: the market will visit intervention sites weekly. The market will carry items from all food groups including fresh, frozen and canned fruits and vegetables, whole grains, dairy/ dairy substitutes, proteins (e.g., frozen meat/fish, beans, eggs), and dry goods (e.g., cooking oil, spices). Prices on the market are affordable, approximately 10% lower than grocery stores.

Interventions

Full-service market intervention

Full-service mobile market implementation: the market will visit intervention sites weekly. The market will carry items from all food groups including fresh, frozen and canned fruits and vegetables, whole grains, dairy/ dairy substitutes, proteins (e.g., frozen meat/fish, beans, eggs), and dry goods (e.g., cooking oil, spices). Prices on the market are affordable, approximately 10% lower than grocery stores.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

No intervention

No intervention

Intervention Type: OTHER

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

Community sites (e.g., public housing hi-rise, low-income senior living residence) must meet the following criteria:

• locale for low-income populations that experience difficulty in accessing healthy, affordable foods (e.g., public housing residences; low-income senior housing) or a community center in a low-income, low-food access (0.5 mile) census tract;
• willingness to be randomized to the intervention or waitlist control;
• located over 0.5 miles apart from other trial sites;
• willingness to allow for recruitment and data collection to occur in onsite community rooms

Participants must meet the following criteria:

• being aged 18 years or older;
• identifying as the primary food shopper in their household;
• being able to speak English or ASL;
• living within a half mile of the community site location; and
• reporting to be likely or somewhat likely to shop at the market in response to: "how likely would you be to shop regularly at the Twin Cities Mobile Market if it came to your neighborhood each week (response options: likely to unlikely).
• willing and able to participate in all study data collection activities

Exclusion Criteria

• planning to move in the next 12 months
• currently shopping at the mobile market
• not having a phone number or mailing address
• presence of a condition or abnormality that would prohibit participation in the study or the quality of the data

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

University of Minnesota

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Principal Investigators

Melissa Horning, PhD, RN, PHN

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

University of Minnesota

Locations

University of Minnesota

Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

Countries

United States

References

Horning ML, Gorman KS, Wagner S, Fulkerson JA, Wolfson J, Laska MN, Harnack L. Evaluating the impact of a full-service mobile food market on food security, diet quality and food purchases: a cluster randomised trial protocol and design paper. BMJ Open. 2025 Mar 6;15(3):e099414. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2025-099414.

Reference Type: DERIVED

PMID: 40050056 (View on PubMed)

Provided Documents

Document Type: Study Protocol and Statistical Analysis Plan

View Document

Document Type: Informed Consent Form

View Document

Other Identifiers

social pro

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id