Project Abstract
Diets low in fruits and vegetables are associated with chronic disease disparities for Latinos living in rural
areas. Furthermore, in rural areas, structural and social factors like low wages, limited public transportation,
and inability to access social services, can limit access to healthy food for Latinos. Despite these barriers to
healthy foods, many Latinos regularly shop at retail food stores (tiendas), which provide access to culturally
desired foods and services. El Valor is an effective, culturally tailored retail food store (tiendas) intervention to
promote the consumption of fruits and vegetables among Latino shoppers. This theory-informed, multi-level
intervention addresses customer behavior, social, and structural factors at the tienda. We propose to shift our
knowledge on adapting evidence-based interventions such as El Valor to rural areas by incorporating social
determinants of health and partnering with community leaders and members to tailor this intervention for
Latinos living in rural communities, tiendas, and the environmental factors that impact these communities.
Using a hybrid type I cluster-RCT design, we aim to augment and adapt the El Valor intervention for Latinos
living and shopping in tiendas in rural communities; to assess the implementation of the adapted El Valor
intervention on access to fruits and vegetables at the tienda level; and to evaluate the effectiveness of the
adapted El Valor intervention on Latino customers’ consumption of fruits and vegetables. We engage in a
community-based participatory research process to create new knowledge on translating evidence-based
interventions. Latinos living in rural communities and advance our understanding of addressing social and
structural drivers of health to reduce health disparities while maximizing effectiveness and external validity.
This research aims to accelerate the implementation of evidence-based interventions to promote health,
reduce health disparities, and contribute to health equity for Latinos in the United States.
