Comprehending Institutional Program Practices of Texas Food Distribution Organizations

Food insecurity is briefly defined as experiencing the lack of or difficulty accessing affordable, nutritionally-dense foods. Providing food can be a stopgap measure, but ideally, food insecurity should be addressed in conjunction with health disparities. The goal of this ARC project is to conduct case studies on Texas food distribution organizations and evaluate institutional program practices that address food insecurity and health disparities together. The first stage of the project identifies two to four food distribution organizations across five Texas counties and collects publicly available information regarding their individual programs. The second stage involves creating a repository system with parameters for each program and developing a coding scheme using similarities identified among the facilities’ initiatives. Finally, a report will be produced that explains the coding scheme to identify key features of relevant programs and provide exemplars of each feature. This project will further evolve a more systematic relationship between food insecurity and health disparities within Texas food distribution organizations. Research from the administrators’ and food distribution organizations’ perspective is pertinent to comprehending how to better integrate food insecurity and health disparities together. Understanding significant characteristics among these individual programs can enhance the services they provide and better address the health of food-insecure clientele. Through this, a model program addressing both food insecurity and health disparities can be visualized.