Addressing Food Insecurity in Underserved Communities

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ABSTRACT Addressing Food Insecurity in under-Represented Minorities (AFIRM) is a proposed collaboration including Health Choice Network (HCN), Jessie Trice Community Health System, Broward Community and Family Health Centers and other Florida Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), University of Miami’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), and Community Based Organizations including Feeding South Florida. We propose to catalyze, deploy, and evaluate community-led structural interventions leveraging multisectoral partnerships to address food insecurity and ultimately reduce health disparities at HCN FQHCs across Florida. The first two years will involve planning, capacity and partnership building to develop/pilot structural interventions to address food insecurity. Structural interventions will address the social, physical, economic, or political environments that result in food insecurity. The interventions include developing universal screening for food insecurity for FQHC patients using simple validated measures of food insecurity built into the EHR. We will then leverage existing and new relationships to develop structural interventions designed to help all persons who identify as having food insecurity. In years 3-8 we will implement community-led structural interventions addressing food insecurity and ultimately assess the impact of these interventions on health outcomes. Interventions include assisting eligbile patients in applying for state and Federal programs, linkages to food insecurity resources such as food banks/pantries located proximal to areas of greatest need (including within the FQHCs) and developing systems to address transportation barriers. More broadly there will be engagement of state and local policy-makers, leaders, and health plans in developing programs and policies and community programs to address food insecurity.