Early insights from Massachusetts show promising pathways for using Medicaid dollars to treat food and nutrition insecurity, but underscore that technology will be a big challenge. Hunger relief entities in Massachusetts got extra incentive to continue exploring ways to work with the healthcare community in September, when the state’s MassHealth…
Food Bank News
When Gary Oppenheimer, Founder and Executive Director of AmpleHarvest.org, set out to expand food access in Native American reservations, he ended up focusing on a few small details that made all the difference. Oppenheimer had built up a large database of more than 8,000 food pantries across the country, as…
The ability of food banks to keep up with the ongoing demand for food is easily one of their biggest accomplishments of recent years. After the frenzy of the pandemic settled, millions more people than before the pandemic continued to access charitable food. And rising inflation has kept demand uncomfortably…
Early on in the pandemic, NYC-based Met Council, the nation’s largest kosher food pantry network, was invited to a meeting at the mayor’s office where government officials ran down a list of more than 800 food pantries to make sure each had access to the city’s emergency food system. When…
People who are new to the charitable food system often experience a fundamental problem when they try to access it – they don’t know where to go for help. A neighborhood might be populated with pantries, but these often operate out of basements or side doors, with little to no…
In an effort timed to coincide with the White House’s convening on hunger, nutrition and health, the Department of Health and Human Services recently unveiled “groundbreaking” approvals that pave the way for state health care plans to use Medicaid funding to pay for nutritious food that would improve peoples’ health.…
When it comes to targeting hunger, Maine’s Good Shepherd Food Bank has found a hyper-local approach can be hyper-effective. The food bank recently announced a $100,000 investment to close the meal gap in one of the state’s larger counties by putting those who live in the county in charge of…
Our Tableau-driven dashboard of the largest 300 food banks in America is interactive and searchable, while offering many different perspectives of the data. By introducing the dashboard, we hope to advance the collective knowledge and understanding of the players working to solve food insecurity in America. For our analysis of…
Wheel a cart around any grocery store in a large metropolitan area these days, and you’ll run into workers who are shopping on behalf of people who’ve placed orders from home. These digital sales make up just 11.2% of the U.S. grocery market, but rapid adoption is expected to nearly…