Project Title: Filling in the Gaps: An Assessment of Food Pantry Meal Kit Feasibility 

Names of Project Lead(s) and Key Team Members: Danica Cowan, Bree Phillips, Linda Dulong

Food insecurity is a significant barrier to integrative health equity.  Nutrition is a key component of integrative care, but it is nearly impossible to implement if patients don’t have access to healthy food.  When patients have access to food banks and other forms of food assistance, individuals often do not have the knowledge, skills, or resources to turn pantry items into nourishing meals.

With this proposal we hope to bridge the gap between pantry and plate.  We have many ideas about what those gaps might be, but our first step would be to ask patients what they need.  Our first deliverable would be to connect with food assistance nonprofits (we have several pending potential connections–SF Marin Food Bank, UCSF Food Pharmacy, Project Open Hand, and others)  Identifying further food assistance, nutrition education, and culinary medicine nonprofits would be a secondary deliverable.  This would be distributed to both UCSF nutrition professionals, as well as to all the surveyed nonprofits. There are so many organizations out there doing great work in the community, but they can be hard to find and aren't well known to nutrition providers or to each other. These nonprofits would distribute our surveys to their individual participants. In parallel we could screen our patients for food insecurity and provide surveys to them as well.  

After identifying partners and distributing and analyzing surveys we would move into phase 2: filling the gaps.  Depending on survey results, we would create or curate a budget-friendly, culturally appropriate recipe library.  This recipe library would be distributed to nonprofit partners, and could be used by our Osher communications team for patient education and nonprofit and marketing purposes.  If culinary skills are identified as a gap, further resources could be created (or curated if they already exist), such as educational videos (knife skill demos, etc), which could also be used by Osher communications. 

If ingredients are identified as a gap, we could build partnerships with local businesses.  For sintace, we anticipate spices and cooking oils may be limiting ingredients, and we could build partnerships with local spice shops and zero waste grocery stores, who could distribute small, customized amounts of ingredients.  If kitchen equipment is identified as a barrier, we could connect to local BuyNothing groups to solicit donations of items like pops, pans, blenders, or slow cookers.  (see BuyNothingProject.org/about to learn more about the BuyNothing movement) 

There are many innovative and sustainable aspects to this project.  By making connections among community organizations we are increasing access and efficiency, and avoiding reinventing the wheel, and promoting integrative health equity not just our patients at UCSF, but in the community at large.

Budget Estimate: Total budget estimate $15,000 to include recipe development, resource procurement, and additional food ingredients