health
Food insecurity (adults)
Why this matters
Food insecurity measures the share of adults who, in the past year, did not always have reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious food. On this platform these are modeled estimates that blend survey and population data, so they are best read as the level in each year, not as year-to-year change (the CDC does not support using them as a trend).
Going without steady, healthy food is a core driver of poor health, linked to diabetes, heart disease, poor mental health, and worse outcomes for children. It usually reflects the squeeze between low incomes and the cost of food, housing, and other basics.
In Charlotte, food insecurity overlaps with food deserts: roughly 15% of Mecklenburg residents live in one, concentrated along the West Boulevard, Beatties Ford Road, and Freedom Drive "corridors of opportunity." Community responses include the resident-owned Three Sisters Market co-op.
About the Charlotte region
This explorer covers the 14-county, two-state Charlotte region (11 North Carolina and 3 South Carolina counties). Many of these indicators connect to a defining regional story: a landmark Harvard study ranked Charlotte last, 50th of the 50 largest U.S. metros for economic mobility (a child raised in the poorest fifth had about a 4.4% chance of reaching the top fifth), a finding that launched the region's Leading on Opportunity agenda. Updated 2024 data show Charlotte has since climbed to 38th.
Opportunity here is also unevenly mapped. An affluent “wedge” fanning southeast from uptown holds a large majority of the city's wealth on under a quarter of its land, while a ”crescent” to the north, west, and east carries higher poverty, a legacy of redlining, exclusionary zoning, and highway routing that recurs across the race, income, health, tree-canopy, and school maps in this tool. No single indicator is good or bad on its own; together they describe how the region sorted opportunity.
Companion resources: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer · UNC Charlotte Urban Institute · Opportunity Atlas · Methods & sources
Learn more
- CDC PLACES — Health-Related Social Needs measure definitions cdc.gov
Official definition of the food-insecurity measure and how it is estimated.
- WFAE — How Charlotte is trying to address food deserts wfae.org
Local reporting on food deserts along the West Boulevard, Beatties Ford, and Freedom Drive corridors.
- Mecklenburg Community Health Assessment health.mecknc.gov
Local public-health data, including food access and neighborhood disparities.
- Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer ui.charlotte.edu
Mecklenburg County’s neighborhood indicator system — 462 Neighborhood Profile Areas (a City of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, and UNC Charlotte Urban Institute partnership).
About the data
Model-based small-area estimates from the CDC PLACES project (2022–2023), which uses BRFSS survey data and multilevel regression & poststratification to estimate adult prevalence for every Census tract. Each estimate has a confidence interval; values with high uncertainty are flagged.
Source: CDC PLACES (model-based small-area estimates).