Abstract
Objective: The purpose of this evaluation study was to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement in programme functioning and common aspects of patients' experiences at a hospital-based food pantry.Design: Semi-structured, in-depth interviews with patients and a cross-sectional survey for providers were used. Interview transcripts were coded using both inductive and deductive approaches and assessed for inter-rater reliability. Descriptive statistics were produced from quantitative data.Setting: An academic urban safety-net hospital in the Northeastern US offering inpatient and outpatient services.Participants: Thirty patients and 89 providers.Results: Patients expressed feeling comfortable, trusting the food, high satisfaction with food quality, convenience, and lack of stigma at the hospital-based pantry. Patients mentioned the pantry helped them eat more fruits and vegetables, but expressed concerns about the healthfulness of other foods distributed. Providers believed they should discuss food insecurity (FI) with patients (99 %) and that the pantry improves the health of patients (97 %), but faced barriers to consistently screening for FI and referring patients to the pantry, such as insufficient training on FI (53 %) and time constraints (35 %).Conclusions: Findings suggest hospital-based food pantries may have several advantages. Hospitals with onsite food pantries must work to eliminate barriers to FI screening and pantry referral. To optimize their impact, such pantries should develop nutritional guidelines for food donations and connect patients with nutrition education resources. Future research should examine health outcomes for patients using hospital-based food pantries.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 3261-3269 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Public Health Nutrition |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 17 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2019 |
Funding
The authors gratefully acknowledge Latchman Hiralall, DTR, Rachel Zack, Sc.D., and Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba, MPH, for their substantive contributions to this study. Financial support: This work was partially supported by the Morton A. Madoff Public Health Fellowship from Tufts University School of Medicine (E.G.). The sponsor had no role in the design, analysis, or writing of this article. This research received no other specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or non-profit sectors. Conflict of interest: None. Authorship: E.G. designed the survey tools; performed data collection and analysis; and drafted the manuscript. A.P. provided oversight for data analysis and significant edits to the manuscript. J.J. performed qualitative data analysis validation; provided oversight for data collection and analysis; and provided significant edits to the manuscript. T.J. provided oversight for data collection and significant edits to the manuscript. Ethics of human subject participation: This study was conducted according to the guidelines laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki and all procedures involving human subjects/patients were approved by the Tufts Health Sciences Campus Institutional Review Board (IRB#: 12922). Written or verbal informed consent was obtained from all subjects/patients. Verbal consent was witnessed and formally recorded.
Keywords
- Evaluation
- Food insecurity
- Food pantry
- Social determinants
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Medicine (miscellaneous)
- Nutrition and Dietetics
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
