Compare methods

	Modified Retail Food Environment Index	Nutrition Environment Measures Survey
Field	Food Agriculture Studies	Food Agriculture Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2011	2007
Originator	U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity	Karen Glanz, James F. Sallis, Brian E. Saelens & Lawrence D. Frank
Type	Spatial ratio index of healthy to all food retailers by census tract	Observational audit pipeline for the consumer nutrition environment
Seminal source	Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2011). Children's Food Environment State Indicator Report, 2011 — Census Tract Level State Maps of the Modified Retail Food Environment Index (mRFEI). Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CDC.	Glanz, K., Sallis, J. F., Saelens, B. E., & Frank, L. D. (2007). Nutrition Environment Measures Survey in Stores (NEMS-S): Development and Evaluation. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 32(4), 282-289.
Aliases	mRFEI, Modified Food Environment Index, CDC Retail Food Environment Index, Healthy Food Retailer Ratio	NEMS, NEMS-S, NEMS-R, Nutrition Environment Measurement Survey
Related	4	4
Summary	The Modified Retail Food Environment Index (mRFEI) is a spatial measure, developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that summarises the retail food environment of a small area as the percentage of healthy food retailers among all food retailers in that area. For each census tract, the CDC counted healthy retailers (supermarkets, larger grocery stores, supercenters and produce stores) and less-healthy retailers (fast-food restaurants, convenience and small grocery stores) from national business databases, then expressed the index as healthy divided by all, times 100. Released in the 2011 Children's Food Environment State Indicator Report with census-tract maps for every U.S. state, the mRFEI offers a scalable, secondary-data way to flag food deserts (no retailers) and food swamps (dominated by less-healthy outlets) and to study how the food landscape relates to diet and obesity.	The Nutrition Environment Measures Survey (NEMS) is a family of structured observation instruments for assessing the consumer nutrition environment — the in-store and in-restaurant conditions that shape what people can actually buy and eat. Developed by Karen Glanz, James Sallis, Brian Saelens and Lawrence Frank and published in 2007, NEMS-S audits retail food stores and NEMS-R audits restaurants, each scoring the availability, price and quality of healthier options relative to standard ones. Trained raters apply a fixed protocol so that two independent observers reach the same verdict, and the resulting scores let researchers compare neighbourhoods, link environments to diet and obesity, and evaluate interventions. NEMS is widely regarded as a foundational, validated tool for measuring the food environment and has been adapted across diverse settings since its release.