(P20-052-24) The Feasibility of Compiling a Statewide List of Charitable Food Assistance Programs

Objectives: Food insecurity is a growing public health problem with critical nutrition and health implications. Many food insecure households rely on charitable food assistance (e.g., food pantries, meal programs) to meet their food needs. The 2022 White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health yielded pledges to improve food assistance efforts; however, no established methodology and datasets are available to document the current availability, accessibility, and utilization of charitable food assistance programs in the U.S. This study examined the feasibility of creating a statewide list of charitable food assistance programs in Georgia by compiling and analyzing existing food bank administrative data.

Methods: The acquisition of food bank administrative data relied on strong partnerships with Georgia food bank associations. Researchers attempted three strategies to compile the statewide list (January 2022 to February 2023). The third strategy encompassed 80 interactions across nine food bank associations to understand and collect food bank data management practices and administrative data. Data quality was assessed by variable completeness, and data cleaning included aligning the names of services provided by agencies, combining separate data entries of the same agency, and standardizing variable names.

Results: This study compiled a statewide list of all active agencies and programs across Georgia as of February 2023 (N=2,404). The process of creating the dataset documents the structure of food bank administrative data, reflects how food bank and partner agency operations are managed, and outlines procedures necessary to collect, clean, and merge the records of constantly evolving active agencies and programs.

Conclusions: The findings of this study prove that compiling a statewide list of charitable food assistance agencies and programs is feasible. Establishing methodology of creating datasets for charitable food assistance organizations is a critical step to inform research, program, and policy decisions to improve access to food assistance for food-insecure Americans.

Funding Sources: Georgia Department of Human Service