Recommendations

Every county needs an organization that will serve as a collaborative conduit that connects efforts between county-wide organizations serving food and providing nutrition education. This organization can centralize and share community activities— like upcoming mobile pantries and education classes— on a centralized social media page that includes volunteer opportunities to engage the community better. How this can be done should be a discussion with local and state policymakers.

The state should incentivize our state’s two food banks to upload their subcontractor lists into West Virginia 2-1-1 database on an annual basis. As this database is the only centralized site of pantries and nutrition education in the state, it can serve the essential function of maintaining a centralized list of state and local programs. In addition, now that the database utilizes the Aunt Bertha platform, health care organizations can connect their electronic health record to the database and better refer patients to local services.

Encourage stakeholder dialogues on the county level that include organizations sharing respective strategic plans and funding streams. Far too often, programs find themselves competing for grants or providing duplicative programming, when there’s already more work than we can collectively accomplish. One organization may be restricted to fund an essential component of a project, while another may have funds available. By working together, we can more efficiently address demand and capitalize on our strengths. Advocacy groups should initiate a statewide dialogue to address the lack of community programs to serve as summer feeding program sites. Lack of transportation is a historical and ongoing challenge to addressing food insecurity in our communities. Without summer feeding sites, many children will not have access to healthy food during the summer months. By working with the West Virginia Department of Education’s Office of Child Nutrition, stakeholders can identify counties in need of sites and target PR efforts to recruit new providers.

Create a cross-sectional task force to revisit transportation challenges in our state. While lack of transportation is a persistent challenge, we see little effort on state and county levels to address it. Now, as we transition to a post-pandemic world, it’s a good time to revisit these historic challenges collectively, as well as discuss how virtual programming can be better utilized.

The pandemic has taught us that food insecurity can affect any of us. Stigma is a continuing problem, and it inhibits people from accessing services. A statewide, or at least a three-county campaign, to elevate this message and encourage people to utilize the services available to them would help address stigma.

Create more youth internships and volunteer opportunities where kids can become meaningfully engaged in programs that address health and hunger. This will help build a greater sense of community, and it will help ensure our food insecurity infrastructure isn’t relying solely on older adult volunteers.