Background

The NYC Green Cart program attempts to infuse low-income neighborhoods with jobs and fresh produce by offering permits for the mobile sale of fruits and vegetables. Because vendors can choose—and change—their vending locations, the Green Cart program poses problems for both program promotion and evaluation. Similar problems have been addressed in the developing world through short message service (sms) text messaging. Our objective is to promote Green Cart vendors and evaluate their geographic distribution and customer volume using text messaging technology.

Methods

An academic physician was partnered with a community-based organization to develop a web-based map (“Locarto”). Vendors can update and consumers and community organizations can determine Green Cart locations on the map via sms text messaging. Locarto outreach workers solicited vendor participation in 2010. Public promotion of the map is beginning in 2011.

Results

This demonstration will discuss the Green Cart program and how Locarto addresses unmet needs through novel use of text message-based mapping. The technology platform, development, and implementation challenges will be discussed. Conclusions

Locarto attempts to provide a web-based text message interface accessible to low-income and low-literacy communities in order to promote economic development and healthy food availability.