Food Insecurity

Combating Food Insecurity Through Community Collaboration

Addressing a Local Need

How this project began

Over 13 million children are currently food insecure (2016). Despite the wealth of the Silicon Valley, children and families in our community continue to struggle to make ends meet, particularly in light of extremely high housing costs. Our program has been working with numerous community partners to combat food insecurity.

In 2012 Dr. Lisa Chamberlain and other local pediatricians were seeing rising rates of food insecurity among her patients and their families. Not sure how to address this issue, she and colleague Dr. Janine Bruce reached out to the local Ravenswood City School District to see if there were consistencies in this pattern. Ms. Ruth Woods, Director of Student Services at RCSD, said that teachers, staff and administrators were absolutely seeing high rates of food insecurity among their students and their families. When we asked how we could help, Ms. Woods simply said help me feed the kids and their parents over the summer. It was from this conversation that our collaborative efforts were born.

History

Learn more about how our program has developed

Champion for Kids

Ms. Woods required that the meal program serve both children and adults, as she knew that if there were hungry children, there were also hungry adults. She also required that the meals be as healthy as possible. We collaborated with Revolution Foods to serve a variety of delicious meals throughout the summer.

Addressing a Local Need

Families were eager to participate in the program. We served over 13,000 meals in the first summer of 2012. Parents loved the salads and the kids couldn't get enough of the fresh fruit.

Power of Collaboration

Our second summer (2013) we needed a more sustainable funding model. We partnered with the YMCA of Silicon Valley and the East Palo Alto YMCA to leverage federal funding from the Summer Food Service Program for unlimited child meals. The partners from the YMCA were amazing at knowing all of the ins and outs associated with federal sponsorship.

Lunch at the Library

In 2014, the Pediatric Advocacy Program began collaborating with the San Mateo Libraries, YMCA of Silicon Valley, and Second Harvest Food Bank to support serving meals in the libraries during winter and summer breaks to both children and adults. The Lucile Packard Children's Hospital provided seed money for the first round of winter meals. Through this collaboration the libraries went on to serve hundreds of meals to children and parents during the summer and throughout the year.

Celebrating Collaborative Accomplishments

Early on we recognized the importance of celebrating individual contributions and shared accomplishments. In 2015, the San Jose Libraries hosted our annual celebration in the same room where they served hundreds of summer meals to local children and parents.

Lunch at the Library Launched Statewide

Based on models piloted by our pediatricians and community partners, California's State Library association launched a state-funded program to support child nutriton needs during the summer. The program has grown tremendously over the last couple of years and has provided numerous meals to children and families in need.

Learn more about the CA Lunch at the Library Program Here

Current Work

Where we are now

The mobile meal program utilized transportation resources to lower the barrier to access these programs.

Mobile Meal Program

Although community-based partnerships with schools offer great solutions to address food insecurity, consistent access through the summer for children and families remains a pervasive problem. At the same time, families enduring this diffictuly face several other barriers including transportation, communication, and fear of public charge. Collaborating with a local mobile meal program, we implemented a mixed methods study to examine and ultimately highlight the importance of innovative community-based approaches to serving marginalized families during the summer.

Intergenerational Food Access

Many community-based approaches have been implemented to address child hunger and nutrition. A child's health, however, is deeply reflective of the health of a family. Nevertheless, limited number of programs have been created to address food insecurity within the entire family. Alongside our communtiy partners, we are evaluating the importance of providing meal access across generations and its impact in both children's and community health.

A family receiving summer meals through the program.

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Food Insecurity

Addressing a Local Need

History

Champion for Kids

Addressing a Local Need

Power of Collaboration

Lunch at the Library

Celebrating Collaborative Accomplishments

Lunch at the Library Launched Statewide

Current Work

Mobile Meal Program

Intergenerational Food Access