When Neighborhoods Lack the Basics, Health Suffers
Across Greater Cleveland/Cuyahoga County, entire neighborhoods lack something as fundamental as a grocery store or pharmacy. Even as Ohio’s poverty rate inches downward, thousands still struggle to buy fresh food or fill prescriptions — a stark reminder that where you live often determines how well you live.
Research has now validated that ZIP codes influence health outcomes. Access to essentials like housing, education, transportation, and nutritious food is closely tied to wealth. Residents in communities with fewer resources face shorter life expectancies—and that inequity often stems from geography.
The term resource desert describes areas where residents must travel far—over 10 miles in rural areas and over one mile in urban ones—to secure basic needs. Food deserts—places with little access to affordable, nutritious food—took shape in the 1980s, when federal policies let large suburban grocery chains outprice and undercut small urban grocers. Many family-run stores closed, leaving behind overpriced corner shops or dollar stores selling mostly ultra-processed foods with few healthy options.
The scale of the problem is alarming:
In Cuyahoga County, about 25% of residents live in food deserts.
In Cleveland, that number jumps to 50%.
Of the Cleveland residents living in a food desert, 60% identify as “non-white.”
Pharmacy deserts have become another growing threat in communities and are contributing to another hidden health crisis. Historically filling over 90% of prescriptions in the U.S. and providing critical services like immunizations and med
ication counseling, pharmacies are now disappearing in urban areas. Drive down any major urban thoroughfare and you are likely to see a shuttered big chain pharmacy. Unable to compete, independent pharmacies were the first to close, and more recently even the chain stores are closing due to the rise of mail-order services. As a result, entire communities are left without easy access to medications or basic healthcare.
Resource gaps rarely occur in isolation, and their accumulation can be detrimental to communities. Food deserts often coincide with poor public transit and low car ownership, forcing residents to rely on unhealthy, high-calorie foods from dollar stores. If pharmacy access is also limited, residents in areas with both food and pharmacy deserts are less likely to receive preventive care or necessary prescriptions—compounding health risks and widening inequities.
Currently, 60 of Ohio’s 88 counties have at least one pharmacy desert and one food desert, compounding residents’ access issues.
According to the State of Poverty 2025 report from the Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies, decisions about Medicaid funding, safety net programs, and supplier pricing policies can either deepen or diminish these disparities. In other words, resource deserts are not inevitable—they’re the result of policy choices.
At YWCA Greater Cleveland, we’re committed to changing that. We will continue to fight for health and resource equity by working with partners across sectors, identifying how policies intersect with public health, and engaging stakeholders to address our communities’ most urgent needs.
CALL TO ACTION
YWCA Greater Cleveland needs your help!
The detrimental consequences of food and pharmacy deserts aren’t impacting OTHER people—they impact our friends, neighbors, co-workers, and the people YWCA Greater Cleveland serves – in devastating ways.
Please contact your members of Congress (you can find them here) and request they:
Support the Healthy Food Access for All Americans Act (H.R. 2473), introduced by Ohio Congresswoman Emilia Sykes, and its companion bill in the U.S. Senate (S. 1176).
Support the Food Farmacy Act of 2025 (H.R. 5412), also introduced by Congresswoman Sykes.
Support the Food Deserts Act (H.R. 484).