Methods of an Indigenous Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Intervention Among Native American Families

Objectives: Background: Food pantries provide a promising point of intervention to address food insecurity and promote health.Historically, food pantries focused on the quantity of food distributed and provided immediate short-term food assistance to those in need; however, with increasing community need, these agencies have become a source for long-term assistance.There is evidence that individuals using food pantries are at high risk of diet-related chronic conditions, making it imperative that pantries provide nutrient-dense foods.In the last decade, considerable effort has been made by the U.S. charitable food system to prioritize distributing nutritious food in a respectful and dignified manner to food pantry clients and the research literature about these efforts is growing.One challenge is that research teams use different assessment measures to quantify the pantry environment and the nutritional quality of food available, collectively called the food pantry environment (FPE).Objective: Our goal is to develop a standard measure to evaluate the FPE in the U.S.Methods: We conducted a comprehensive literature review of published food pantry assessment tools and summarized how each measure captures the nutritional quality of food and various environmental constructs (e.g., using a client choice model versus distributing pre-packaged bags of food).An expert panel of academic researchers and community leaders from the charitable food system was convened to provide input on the fundamental constructs that are essential to measure FPEs.Results: We have developed an initial version of the measure to capture key constructs of the pantry environment.This assessment uses published nutrition standards for charitable food (i.e., the Healthy Eating Research Guidelines) to assess the nutritional quality of available food.Conclusions: A standardized measure of the FPE will facilitate research in food pantries, particularly healthy pantry initiatives conducted by food banks, and support comparisons of research findings across studies.