Food banks have long said that they’re only as good as their pantry networks, and lately, they’ve been backing up that sentiment with intention. Fueled partly by Covid-era support, food banks have been growing the capacity of their pantries through a wide range of grant-making activities. Now, many are at a stage of formalizing those grant programs as they seek to make capacity-building a standard part of their operations. High demand for food during the pandemic underscored the need for robust pantry networks, hitting home the reality that pantries could become bottlenecks if they were not eq ..read more

Giving food pantry clients the ability to choose their own food can feel like a big undertaking, but Lowcountry Food Bank of Charleston, S.C., has developed a flexible, hands-on approach that’s helping pantries in its network make that move one baby step at a time. About 30% of the 60 pantries in the food bank’s three-county Northern Region are now operating a choice model, thanks in large part to the efforts of Kari Hanna, Agency Relations Manager, and Suzy Johnson, Nutrition Education Coordinator. (The food bank has more than 230 pantries throughout its ten-county operating area.) The key to ..read more

Followers of the Food is Medicine movement will know that a growing number of private food box companies are working with insurers to provide their clients with healthy food as a covered benefit (Food Bank News wrote about that here). Steve Brazeel, Founder and CEO of SunTerra Produce, is showing that there is a role for farmers to play in the Food is Medicine movement as well. The Project Food Box program of SunTerra is an outgrowth of the USDA’s pandemic-era Farmers to Families Food Box program. Reluctant to drop Farmers to Families when Covid funding dried up, SunTerra eased into a new vers ..read more

It was a Friday afternoon in late summer when Bryan Wang, the CEO of bosWell Inc., knocked on the door of Better Lives Rhode Island, a Providence-based community organization that supports a food pantry, community meals, and homeless outreach. Wang was cold-calling, trying to find an organization with plenty of food-pantry clients that would be interested in taking advantage of bosWell’s framework for connecting clients to additional social services beyond food. Paula Hudson, Executive Director of Better Lives RI, was interested. Now, bosWell places two of its “advocates,” similar to community ..read more

Empowering the Masses of Dallas, Tex., serves 1,500 people a month through its hunger relief programs … but the food it serves is not really the point. The nonprofit’s mission statement emphasizes building stronger communities through vocational training and core skills development. Food plays a role as the “carrot.” It draws people in so staff members and volunteers can build relationships, assess needs, and potentially refer food clients to the organization’s bread-and-butter offerings – their workforce training programs. This article is part of an ongoing series highlighting innovation and ..read more

Food banks and pantries know they are really good at getting healthy food to vulnerable people. Increasingly, the healthcare industry is understanding that as well. Both healthcare payers and providers are seeking ways to more fully partner with experts in hunger relief. They realize food banks and pantries not only have deep connections to individuals in need, but also the logistical ability to get food into communities where it’s needed.   Those strengths can be a huge help to healthcare entities as they embrace food as medicine – the idea that food and nutrition security is essent ..read more

A recently published paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association gives the cold shoulder to the concept of Food is Medicine.  The authors, affiliated with Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania, describe all the attention being paid to Food is Medicine – including by the White House at its conference on hunger, health and nutrition last year – as “unjustified” by Food is Medicine’s likely benefit. The authors make the case that getting people to eat healthfully, even if they are being provided food by their healthcare provider, is just difficult to do. Fo ..read more

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