Community-Led Interventions to Address Food Inequity

Research By: Carley Riley, MD, MPP, MHS | Michelle Gorecki, MD, MPH

Post Date: January 1, 2024 | Publish Date: Jan. 1, 2024

Critical Care Medicine | Top Scientific Achievement

2024 Research Discoveries with life course path above the text

In its first year, a community-academic partnership aimed at addressing food inequity in three disadvantaged neighborhoods in Cincinnati funded nine community-designed interventions, distributing over $250,000 and providing 89,039 equivalent meals to at least 3,106 families, highlighting the effectiveness of distributed leadership and community engagement in tackling social challenges.

Food insecurity affects approximately one in six children in the United States and one in five children in Hamilton County, Ohio. The System to Achieve Food Equity (SAFE) was established initially to help address increased food insecurity occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic. The initiative targeted three Cincinnati neighborhoods (Avondale, East Price Hill and Lower Price Hill) all of which have experienced high poverty rates and decades of systemic racism dating back to “redlining” policies that started in the 1930s.

Michelle Gorecki, MD, MPH, Division of General and Community Pediatrics, led the effort to capture and disseminate the results of this initiative. The community-academic team was led by corresponding author Carley Riley, MD, MPP, MHS, Division of Critical Care Medicine.

The team established neighborhood leadership councils that included residents, researchers, and representatives of neighborhood-based non-profits. Proposals were solicited from the community via flyers and social media, then presented to the leadership councils for co-design.

“Critical to the success of the initiatives were distributed leadership, shared power, word of mouth and community engagement,” Riley says. “The success of this type of community-academic partnership shows promise to address a wide variety of social and health challenges.”

Next steps include expanding the initiative to more neighborhoods and to other social determinants of health.

Cincinnati Children’s co-authors included Vivian Sevilla, MBA, LSSGB, Kristen Gasperetti, MPA, Kimberly Cutler, BS, Chika Okano, BS, and Constance Stewart, MBA; Lauren Bartoszek, PhD, from The Health Collaborative; Madeline Chera, PhD, from Green Umbrella; and Binny Samuel, PhD, MBA, from UC.