Tricia Kitzmann: Welcome to the fifth installment of Building Health Equity webinar series. Today's topic is food access equity, giving everyone a seat at the table. I'm Tricia Kitzmann. I am a Program Coordinator with the Institute for Public Health Practice at the University of Iowa, College of Public Health. A couple housekeeping items, this session is a Zoom meeting format. You can stay muted with the options with your camera offer on. Do note that the session is being recorded for later viewing for those who can't join us immediately. You can find the chat box down at the bottom of your Zoom screen. You can message Natalie if you're having any technical issues, you can also chat with everyone in the group. Feel free to use the Q&A option or the chat function to ask your questions. Natalie and Cynthia are helping me monitor those, so we will be able to answer those in a timely manner for you. Please introduce yourself if you can in the chat so you can share who you are, what agency you work with and what your role is at that agency. I will now invite our guest speakers to introduce themselves. If you could give us your background, how did you get involved or get interested in this area of work and what do you currently do at your organization? And Nicki, we'll kick it off with you.

Nicki Ross: Okay, great. My name is Nicki Ross and I am the Executive Director of Table to Table. We are a food rescue organization in Johnson County, Iowa. And let's see, I've worked in nonprofit social services for about 15 years. I've worked with the women's empowerment program and supported women in transitional housing, English as a second language programs and some youth programs. I say all of that to say, I've been with Table to Table for about five years, and the one commonality that all of the programs I've been involved in has been access to the food. In every group I've ever worked with, this has been a challenge which should pretty much tell you how big of a problem it is. I think I answered all the questions. Marlén Mendoza, do you wanna go?

Marlén Mendoza: Yes, thanks Nicki. Hi everyone, it's so good to see everyone here for this great conversation. My name is Marlén Mendoza, so I will be speaking on behalf of the work that we are involved with LULAC, stands for League of United Latin American Citizens, but personally for myself, I am a business owner and I am the Executive Director of Mendoza Consulting. So it's my own policy consulting firm that just picked up this year. My background before I launched my consulting business is I worked in Policy in DC, ranging from public health to mental health around boys and young women of color. A lot of around a topic called opportunity youth, which is young people between ages of 14 to 26 that are not in school and not working. So any type of policies that help them get reconnected to workforce or get reconnected to education and become active members in their community, as well as anything around workforce development, not only for young people but for adults as well. And very similar to Nicki, I did a lot of work in the State of Iowa, in DC, and I still engage with a lot of clients from all over different states, work with different departments, state and local. And the thing that always comes up is access to food as one of the key root things as to why it is that a child for example, does not participate at school, has high truancy rates to anything from mental health, not being nourished, having extreme anxiety. So, it just goes on and on, and it's one of those things that if we can find ways to help folks reach that first level of security, access to food, it can really make a difference and a lot of these other policy issues that I've been working on. So that's my background professionally for this, how I got involved in this work is in my spare time, I'm a part of the executive board for LULAC Council in Iowa City called Council 308. So, LULAC is nationwide initiative, it is one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the nation to represent and be one of many collective voices for the Latino community. In the state of Iowa, we're very active, we have over 16 councils across the state. Your city most likely probably has a LULAC Council. So, I will be speaking to specifically is the one in Iowa City. But that's how I got involved in the work, and it really began when we had the derecho storm around 2020, when we started realizing just the huge gap in food insecurity that we had just here in the city and getting people food, because at the time the storm had cost some blackouts and so people needed to find ways to get food, and then that just rolled into what we have now and what we're trying to build, which we'll talk about a little bit here. But I'm gonna hand it over now to Luke.

Luke Elzinga: Thanks, my name is Luke Elzinga, I am the Communications and Advocacy Manager at DMARC, which stands for the Des Moines Area Religious Council. We are an interfaith organization that's been around for 70 years and our mission is working together to meet basic human needs. So, the primary way we've done that for the past 46 years is through our food pantry network. We work with 15 different food pantries. We have a mobile food pantry program and we also have a home delivery program. And then in my role, I'm also doing a lot of advocacy work, especially around the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP. And I also serve on the board of the Iowa Hunger Coalition, which is an advocacy statewide organization in Iowa.

Tricia: Well welcome, thank you guys for taking time outta your busy schedules to share your expertise with us today. So I'm gonna kick it off with the first question and I'll kind of leave this as a round robin, so feel free to jump in. What does equity food access really mean or equitable I guess I should say food access really mean? What does it look like from your perspective and what you see within the organizations and the work that you have done? Who would like to kick that off? Luke, do you wanna go first?

Luke: Yeah, yeah, I can go for it. I think to me equitable food access means having access to the food you want, when you want it, where you are. And so there's a level of geographic access, but also economic access. So I guess what it looks like to me is having grocery stores that are open in all areas of our community that have expanded hours, lower prices for nutritious food, which is not really what we have right now, culturally appropriate food available, not having to drive to get the food you need, more weekend and evening hours at food pantries and other types of low or greater access points, lower barrier points, things like community fridges, little free pantries, things like that, and abundance of community gardens and having the ability to access land to grow food. So, that was kind of a big list, but I was thinking before this, and it's probably much bigger list than that too.

Tricia: Awesome, thank you.

Marlén: Yeah, Luke, you kind of set a strong foundation there, so I'm just gonna add onto what you mentioned. Some key points is a lot of times we think that just having access to just food for a lot of these populations is, oh, well you have what you need, but in reality, not just having access to food doesn't mean you have access to healthier food, and that's a big thing that I have had conversations with community members is that, although they'll have access to food or certain food is cheap enough to buy, the biggest thing is childhood obesity. And they noticed that, although that they are working around the clock, they're doing their best to feed their kid, the one thing that's always a top mind is learning education around, What is healthier food options, how they can change certain habits within their family, understanding that they have to do it first before the children can adopt those healthy habits, having access to after school, some form of after school, if the kids are in after school program to healthier food options as well. So really just having, not only culturally relevant food, but food that they want and need that oftentimes tends to be healthier, which tends to be more expensive for them on their budget, or maybe the food pantry might not have access to certain foods that they need.

Nicki: Yeah, that was a great list. In addition, I don't have too much to add except for what, in preparation for this question, one of the things I wrote was, the question was what does equitable food access mean and what does it look like? And we got a lot of really concrete things and all of those things have so much more about it like the transportation aspect and the culturally appropriate aspect and like everything that goes into making that possible. But Table to Table, we recover food that is still edible from companies and organizations and it's still edible, it's good, and we get it to people who can eat it. So that has me thinking on a system level and I just thought it would be good to start with the question that is, why do we accept the idea that people should only have access to food if they deserve it and pay for it? And like, I do think we would be remiss if we don't, like, we have to think about that from a system level, because why are there food deserts and there's no transportation? Because the idea is there are a lot of people in those areas it's not like profitable, because the idea is people in those neighborhoods won't buy the food or they have, they have less access to financial resources, so why would you put it there? But that is also part of the system of like why food? We need it to live and so I that's really the thing. What does equitable food access mean? I think ultimately it means changing the way we think about food as a resource. And that food is a resource that we all contribute to. And the worst part is the people who contribute to our food system day to day, the folks on the front line, they're the ones seeking the resources at food pantries and stuff. We go into a grocery store and collect 700 pounds of food that's perfectly edible to eat. And the person who handed it over to me comes to the food bank the next day to access that food because they are not paid enough. So, that's my 2 cents.

Tricia: Thank you guys and thank you Nicki. I think one of the things that we probably all can agree on it's not just a food access issue, it starts much bigger than that, especially if we start thinking about going upstream on what is causing the food insecurity and food access issues, it's definitely not necessarily for lack of a better word, it's not access to food, we have food, it's just not everyone has the same access to it or means to get it. The food's here, it's just it's not necessarily equitable for folks to be able to access it. So, thank you for bringing up the fact that it is bigger, it's bigger than just what we're seeing on our day to day basis. There's a lot more issues upstream versus just the access issue. Any - Luke, Marlén Mendoza, do you have anything else to add to that before I go to the next question? Okay, perfect. What are some of the major factors currently driving food insecurity in the communities you work with, or at least from the perspective that you're seeing?

Marlén: I can kick this one off. So I can first speak to my experience when I was out in the east coast. So, folks on the call might be familiar with this policy, but public charge has been something that's been around before Trump, so that started out in the Clinton era. Now, what you would say, what would cause or make you public charge was something that things that were very minor, nothing like accessing SNAP for example. So, what I experience is that within the Latino community and how I've been working with them in general, it is harder for folks to accept that they need help and have to go and access things for free, there is not for everyone, but there is this overlying type of stigma of, you shouldn't be asking for public services or help. So, we had to work a lot around saying, hey, everyone goes through a hard time, it's not just a stigma saying that if you're getting these things it's because you're not working harder or anything like that. So we did have to work on a lot of mindsets and changing the way that people saw getting access to food. And I think that goes back to Nicki's original point about changing the way that we think of food as a resource, which makes folks sometimes think like, oh, I don't wanna wait in line on a food bank, or they're gonna think that I'm not working, or that I'm just not doing anything or being a provider. So that was one of the things originally that we would always have to deal with. The second thing was that when Trump was in office, there was a change in the public policy there was a change in policy regarding public charge and what caused you to be public charge that could risk deportation. So it made it really hard for mixed status families to even receive government resources, including SNAP. So around 2016, when this change in public charge happened, we started seeing a huge decline in SNAP enrollment for families that qualified because they could, but they had a person in their family that was mixed status. So what we did around that time is we did a huge campaign where we were just trying to send information to let folks know like, hey, you still technically, you can qualify, don't let this scare you away. And what happened is that there were so much, so much information, so many things were in the air, then most folks even said, you know what? I'm just not gonna touch any public resources, which was super damaging to at the time when people, you already in need of help, and now you're not touching anything because you're afraid that you might be deported or someone will say this or that you will count as public charge or your residency car won't get renewed. So there was a lot of fear in general, and a lot of it was just too much information being thrown in the beginning of that process. So that to this day, I still see after effects of that during tax season, we tend to volunteer to go to free tax sites, where if you're already getting free services for a 1040 for a tax form, that means that you're already in a bracket where you can qualify to also enroll for SNAP. So we do this like two for one thing, where we go, we wait for folks to leave the free tax site, and then we ask them like, hey, if you got these forms done, you make under this certain bracket, we can help you enroll for SNAP. And every time still happens where you're still kind of like, getting the information across, letting them know like, hey, things have changed, you can still apply for this, like, it's not gonna hurt you, it's not gonna damage you and folks are still hesitant to go through with enrolling with services that really will go a long way. That's one of the things I would say. Also lack of information among young adults, college students face huge insecurity and food, and people would not think about it, but I myself was a college student, I was a first year college student, I couldn't rely asking my parents for money when I was in college, so I had to work full time when I came here at the University of Iowa. And it wasn't until my junior year where I realized, and someone shared with me, almost kind of like on the down low, like to like, be like, oh yeah, actually, I'm on food stamps and I qualified 'cause I'm working X amount of hours and things like that. And I realized, oh my gosh, this whole time I could have applied for college food stamps as a college student. And I took advantage of it in my junior and my senior year. But even now when I come across college students and I know that they come from lower income backgrounds or they're first gen, I let them know like, hey, you can apply for this, don't feel bad, this is a thing that exists, you shouldn't be worrying to pay for food, you're a student, your first priority is to be a student. So, a lot of it is miscommunication around certain policies and who benefits for what around access to SNAP or programs that help support people with food as well as I would say, things that are just impacting is just a lot of families just work around the clock. And Luke mentioned that in the beginning that some pantries are not open 24 hours, which I mean, we understand there's a capacity need to it, but just trying to strategize around what we can do to make sure folks can find someone or maybe deliveries is a great point where they might not be at home, but they can drop off the box if the kids are at home or things like that. But those are some of the things that I would mention that I've seen that has definitely impacted people to receive access to food.

Tricia: Thank you, Luke do you have something to say?

Luke: Yeah, I can go next, sorry. One thing I think that we are seeing right now, and this is happening all across the state is food banks, food pantries are breaking records and some of them are breaking 40 year records. And we just had our busiest August of all time. And some of the pantries that we worked with had their busiest month of all time period, and we fully expected that will happen for our entire network in November. I think two things are really driving the increases right now. One, is everyone's aware of food prices are higher and so people are maybe have a little less in their budget to dedicate to food, so they're turning to food pantries to kind of meet that. What I suspect is a much larger reason right now is in the State of Iowa, beginning in April, people lost access to additional SNAP benefits that had been in place during the pandemic. So, starting in April of 2020, everyone who received SNAP was able to get the maximum allowable benefit. There were some additional changes throughout the course of the pandemic, there was a temporary 15% increase, and then there was kind of a, that was replaced with a permanent about 25% increase. There was additional dollars for people who were already maybe receiving the maximum. That all went away in the State of Iowa in April, as a result of the governor lifting the public health emergency. Starting in April, we have just seen demand skyrocket. We were at like a 42% increase in April over the same month, the previous year and that's just been steadily increasing. In August, it was an 86% increase. In September, it's possible that we could double our numbers over last year. Because of that timeline, I think the drop in SNAP benefits is one of the major driving factors there. But I do know there's states in other parts of the countries that still have those in place that are starting to see impact from higher food prices. I think I saw in the chat, we have some people joining from outside the State of Iowa. And this is something to keep in mind in your own state because those emergency allotments will go away either when your state lifts their emergency declaration or when the federal government chooses to lift the emergency declaration. And there's some people that suspect that that could be going away kind of at the end of this year. And I think that will be, we're seeing it right now in Iowa, there's other states who are seeing it from ending that. I think we're gonna have a nationwide crisis on our hands when that happens if our policy makers aren't paying attention to that. So, that I think is a huge thing. And then along with the SNAP expanded benefits, there's just a lot of other pandemic era programs that we're really helping people that are now have gone away. So, whether that's the emergency rent and utilities, people got the stimulus checks that were helpful, the enhanced child tax credit payments have been shown that they reduced child poverty. And so all of those programs have gone away. And we are really seeing so many more people turn to food pantries and a lot of new people too. We had close to 2,000 people in the month of August who had never used one of our food pantries before.

Nicki: I will just share a quick story, 'cause I can't add that, y'all are awesome and really like covered it. But speaking of like seeing new people and to Marlén Mendoza's point about even when the resources are available, which they have largely gone away, a lot of things have gone away, people don't wanna access them. Table to Table is right next door to our biggest food bank in our county. And because we are a food distributor too, like sometimes people confuse us, we don't serve the public directly, we give food to agencies. So we'll get folks who come in. And a few weeks ago I had a woman come in looking for the food bank and hadn't been there more than two minutes and she was very upset about having to utilize we're looking for the food bank. So I went outside and we went to find it and she couldn't walk in because there is a lot of shame involved in accessing these resources. And again, rethinking how we think about food is so important. Like it is so shameful if you cannot provide for the basic needs of your family. And this particular person shared a little bit with me about if you are already on the edge, poverty is a huge problem, but if you are already on the edge and now inflation has called gas prices to go up, and food prices to go up, any extra little bit that was getting you ahead that month is gone. And now, what do you do to like supplement that? And I just think that like, we think this crisis is over and it's almost worse, like it is worse, like in a lot of ways, because a lot of what was available during the pandemic was helping the baseline issues of food insecurity and access to basic needs in our country, regardless of a crisis and should have been available all this time. Another example of even if you qualify, is when Luke talks about the maximum allowable benefit. So depending on your income and some of you might know this already, but you get a certain amount depending on your income and your family and all of that. I don't know what it is exactly, so please don't quote me, but I know at some point, like it was $12, like if you were qualified, you could get $12 in SNAP benefits, and that's what you qualify for. If you understand anything about the process of dealing with the federal government on anything, I'm sorry, but like going through that process and then having to maintain it and prove that you deserve this money for $12 is like ridiculous. Those are just some like real world examples of what people are facing in these day to day decisions. And what happens if people can't access the resource or for many reasons won't and many good reasons is the decisions they are making is, and we look at like summertime, childhood, hunger, for example. Kids and I, again, I should have written my number down, but I think it's kids can go without as many as 10 meals a week during the summer because of a lack of access to food. And they'll just make that decision, okay kid, we're not gonna have breakfast today, we're gonna eat our lunch and we're gonna eat our dinner, or we're going to supplement for whatever is cheapest and most available. Even if you're not hungry, it's really bad, like for your health and your body and the decisions people have to make, so yeah.

Luke: Can I just hop in, too? I think you really nailed it, Nicki, and you might have a slightly outdated number, prior to the pandemic, it was actually $16.

Nicki: Okay, sorry.

Luke: No, no, I'm just joking. I was making a joke 'cause it's still like, oh yay, four more dollars. It was $16 prior to the pandemic, and then USDA last October had a whole announcement, how it was kind of reformulating the Thrifty Food Plan calculations and how this was gonna be a historic increase, which it was, but what that minimum benefit went to was from $16 to $20. So, I work with a woman who prior to the pandemic, she was getting that minimum benefit, $16. During the pandemic with emergency allotments, she was getting $250 a month. She lives on a fixed income, she has disability, pretty rare genetic disorder, all sorts of health implications. During the pandemic because of that money, she was able to actually fill her prescriptions routinely, make sure all her appointments were met and copays covered. And now she's back to $20 a month and is making those decisions again about, do I fill a prescription or do I buy food? And I think it has huge implications on people's health, especially people with a disability or seniors. And one thing I wanna mention that I've been trying to bring up pretty often is, while we have food banks and pantries that are breaking records across the state, the actual number of Iowans who are receiving SNAP benefits is at a 14 year low. And I think you're right Nicki, there's so many people we hear from anecdotally who say, it's just not worth my time and effort to apply if I'm only gonna receive $20 a month or another small amount, or maybe I make just too much to even be eligible for the program. So I think the State of Iowa and our federal government really needs to take a hard look at the SNAP eligibility requirements and benefit amounts because we really proved during the pandemic, people can have their nutrition needs met when they have an adequate amount of benefits and don't need to use food pantries to meet their food needs.

Tricia: Wow, thanks guys. We did get a question in the Q&A, so I wanna make sure we address that. So from your perspective, or for information that you know, what is our governor, our state or federal senators, house representatives and members doing regarding the huge explosion of families accessing food pantries? Any of your expertise, if you could share that would be fantastic.

Luke: I'll try to be diplomatic. So the governor's response around the drop in benefits was essentially that there are jobs out there and people need to work, which completely disregards the fact that two thirds of SNAP people on SNAP are children's seniors or people with a disability, and those who don't fall into the category are largely working and they're not getting paid enough to make ends meet. I did see the State of Iowa a couple days ago announced that we will be issuing pandemic EBT benefits for households with children under six, I think that's a positive thing, probably should have been done months ago. In terms of our state house, I'm a SNAP advocate, we've been fighting for five years against additional barriers and cuts to the program. I don't have high hopes that our state legislature will work to expand SNAP, we're certainly always pushing for that, increasing the income eligibility, investing in the Double Up Food Bucks Program, which provides extra benefits of people who are purchasing fresh fruits and vegetables. Next year, we have the farm bill discussions coming up. They happen every five years and SNAP is a big chunk of the farm bill. So I encourage everyone, this fall, next spring, if you get the chance to talk to any of our US representatives or senators really bring up the importance of SNAP, because that is gonna be a big part of the discussion. I think there's gonna be some kind of contentious pieces around SNAP in the farm bill and ultimately we don't know how that conversation is gonna go until after the election and looking at kind of who holds chambers. So, I guess I'm not super optimistic.

Marlén: I don't know, super in detail at the state level, what I was doing around this specific question, but I do wanna encourage everyone in the call, I see that we have people from all over the nation to look into how the ARPA funds, so American Rescue Plan money is being used at the local level, that is where you have the most say to say, hey, we should really use some of this ARPA funding maybe we're gonna do food and farm grants, or maybe we're going to use something. And it's very creative, this is taxpayer money that you can go into your city council at the county level and say, hey, this is a problem, the purpose of this money is meant to provide relief from the pandemic, and this is clearly one of those needs where people need access to food. So, look into it, see if there's already something going on so that you could apply if you're an organization or a department to see how you can access some of those funds. There's just, I mean it's a historic once in a lifetime that the federal government is even pouring so much money at the state and local level, we don't know the next time someone's gonna pull that lever again. And we wanna make sure that it's not just a one time thing, but it's something that can create a sustainable actual infrastructure, and not just like a one time thing where we're gonna spend this money and not look back and see like, well, did we really invest in it? So, now that I'm speaking on that, I do know for folks on the call that are from Iowa or Johnson County, that there is a community food and farm grant program that has been leveraged through some of these funds. And I can share more information with folks here that they can share it afterwards for anyone locally. But this is just another great example of what you can do with some of those funds and how you can close some of these food insecurity gaps. Another thing I do wanna shout out is, at least in the State of Iowa that I'm familiar with and things have not changed, we're not doing our best to support local farmers and big ag buys up the land because it's so high per acre, it's ridiculous, how can someone maintain themselves and not sell out their farm? It also increases the price in food and just everything in general and it's harder to then have programs where you can have local farmer support or have places where you can then use some of the land to then grow certain food that is necessary for wherever you are or located at.

Tricia: Nicki, do you have anything else to add?

Nicki: Y'all got it, good.

Tricia: Awesome. I just wanna remind our folks that are listening and joining us today, please feel free to put any additional questions, comments in either the chat or the Q&A box, and we can get to those as we continue through. So please, if you have additional questions or comments that you wanna make, please feel free to share those. I'm gonna go on to our next question. What practices have you found to be the most successful in increasing access to healthy foods for those who need it most?

Nicki: Do you want me to lead? I don't know, it's hard. Table to Table, like I said, we don't serve people directly, but one of the things that is really helpful for us is that we actually do have a system view in Johnson County at least, and are partnered with pretty much almost anybody who's trying to help solve this problem. And I'm just really proud of the work we do in Johnson County together. And it's not without its fault of course, but how hard we work together on this. So I think from a system view, one of the things that I see services doing is really understanding their customer and thinking about people as a customer of this service. Like I do see partners really working toward a welcoming and nonjudgmental environment for folks to come and access foods, because your question is specifically about increasing access to healthy foods. But if you can't even get people in the door because they don't know what they're gonna expect, or they're being judged by what they take, that's kind of like a bottom line issue of food access. And then of course, one of our folks locally, PJ, who is formerly with the Coralville Pantry, and now she works for Johnson County. One of the things she talks about is, using grocery store science. And so, if your food pantry is designed like a grocery store, meaning people can choose things and you can lay it out in a way that puts healthy foods most accessible and ready, and you have some resources and maybe how to use 'em, it's open and available for people to take, but not forced upon folks, treat it like, in our grocery stores, what do they put in the aisles like, yeah, they put candy and stuff. But we have the opportunity to put things that are healthy and available if we can access those foods, but they're expensive. And one of the things Table to Table does is, tries to increase our produce and healthy proteins and dairy products, because they're so hard to come by, and because they're so much more expensive. So, that's just something I've seen folks doing locally that I think is awesome. And obviously Luke and Marlén Mendoza, you see that in your work, so, whatever else you can add.

Tricia: Nicki, I just wanna one quick follow up before we move on with that same question. For you, just so others may, who may not know necessarily you talk about that you're not necessarily a food pantry and you get food and share it with your local partners. You mentioned briefly that you get food from possibly restaurants, but where else can you share with us, where else does Table to Table get their food from?

Nicki: Well and I can connect it back to this question. What practices have you found to be successful increasing access to healthy food? First, is that it's available like that, you can even get it. So what we do is, there is food waste in every aspect of the food system where really perfectly edible food is literally going to the landfill. And so what we do is we find the grocery store and we find the food processor, and we find the warehouse that has this food, and they're gonna send it away and we make it happen so that we can go get it and get it to people who can eat it. So basically, I don't know, we have over 100 partners in our community and actually that is possible in every single community. If your local organizations are having a hard time providing fresh produce and dairy and things like that, there is a place locally, a grocery store, a company, a restaurant that has food that's extra. Like, they're not gonna tell you that, you're gonna have to work to get them, and convince them and all that, do the work to get it, but it is there, and it is one of the most sustainable ways of accessing healthy foods, because frankly, food waste is kind of here to stay, like it's not going anywhere, our entire system would have to be overhauled in order to make that not happen. So why don't we get it and get it to folks? So that explains our piece of that. Anything else about healthy food access that I definitely only covered the where level.

Tricia: For sure, well, and you also work with local producers, the people that grow food. So you guys have volunteers that also harvest food. So not only do you rely on organizations and warehouses and grocery stores, but you also work with local folks that grow food, so you have access to it to be able to share as well, so there's less food waste there. Okay, so back to the original question. Yes, go ahead.

Marlén: Yeah, no, this is great. And very similar to Nicki, LULAC works in partnerships. So we don't have direct access to food, but again, a lot of the times when you have great partnerships, you're able like Table to Table, like Coralville Food Pantry, you're able to then serve people's needs. But two examples that I've seen, one that I've led with a group of entrepreneur women, and the second one just here locally. So the first one is commercial kitchens. So, once you have access to the food, through Table to Table, for example, through Nicki, or through a local farmer, the education behind then teaching folks how to cook certain meals. So LULAC has had a great partnership with an organization called Vegan Outreach, and I'm pretty sure they're national. So what we do is we work with the organization LULAC to work and find local Latino grocery stores. And oftentimes when you go to the grocery stores, we forget they're business owners, so they're running a business, they don't necessarily, and this is no shade, but they don't necessarily know that certain foods should not be refrigerator, or if you place certain things here, it'll last longer, so you don't have food waste. So we will work with those Latino grocery stores and say, hey, we want to expand your healthy options and we have a truck from Vegan Outreach from California coming in a couple weeks, how many of these tons of food that's gonna come in, would you want to then provide in your grocery store? Then LULAC helps with the promotion around letting all the community members know like, hey, there's gonna be a truck coming in, and we get in advance from Vegan Outreach to certain items that are listed there. So then community members go and they get to shop at either a discount or they even get free groceries because we don't want it to go to waste, again, we wanna give it to people, but we have a relationship with the smaller markets, because that's tends to be where sometimes if there's no big grocery store, that's where people go and get all their food. So we wanna expand what's in there, help them with education and how they can keep certain things more sustainable and then have partnerships where people are then bringing in the food. We've also had examples with Table to Table actually with Nicki, where they would bring the refrigerated van to trailer home parks, so you're bringing the food to them. So LULAC would then promote and let everyone know, like hey, we're gonna have milk, we're gonna have bread, like your basics. And then we would sit outside the trailer home park and people would come and they would just kind of peek out and be like, what are you guys doing here? Why are you here? And we have a sign and we're like, oh, this is free, just come here and take it. And then they're like, oh, you know what? Thank you so much for coming here, let us know whenever you guys are back in town and we've done that multiple times through LULAC and it's been really amazing. The other thing too is there's a great organization, local here in Iowa called Sustainable Iowa Land Trust or SILT, and they work with community members and it's such a beautiful example. So they work with community members to give them a good amount of piece of land, and they then tell the people, you get to grow whatever you want, we'll help you with, you have the land we'll help you with whatever resources you need. And then throughout the whole year, you have community members and a lot of them tend to be from like the local center for workers justice, so like, lower income people who come, they tend to land, they grow what they wanna grow, and then they get a chance to take back to their community, and if they wanna sell it, they can sell it and they can keep whatever they make from selling it. So this year, one of the things that I've been doing with a group of other women is we're trying to do local markets or mikado, which are different than farmer's markets, because you can try different cuisines and things like that. And we're trying to then get some of these people who are growing their own vegetables on this land to then bring those vegetables to different sites like this, or then they can then either give it for free or sell it and give people more access to than having these different types of vegetables. And it's a win-win because we're talking about culturally relevant foods that they like. So they can then plant certain things that they don't see in the grocery store. And then they can let their community members know like, hey, we grew these things and they're like, oh, I can't wait, and then they start selling it amongst themselves or they start sharing it and then more people wanna get on the land to then grow certain things and things like that. But those two examples have been really, really helpful for people to get more access to food. Another strategy that it's actually, it's not as complex, but it goes a long way, we notice that with LULAC, a lot of the families that we deliver food boxes too. So LULAC serves as a mediator between the food bank and the home. A lot of times, because they're working around the clock, the food bank might not be open when they get off the clock, kids are alone in the house oftentimes. So LULAC to create trust again so that they can receive their services and not have that stigma, LULAC will then go and have all their information so that they also don't think that food pantry's gonna take their information and become public charge. So we are the ones, the facilitator dropping off the food boxes. And we noticed that just for context, around derecho we started with 12 families, up to now we still have 50 families. And so every week we get an average of 16 to 20 boxes that we have to deliver with our volunteers. And we noticed that over half of the families that we deliver food boxes to are single mothers. And so when we said, okay, is there anything else aside from food that can really help you so that you can take your extra money and you don't have to spend it on hygiene products or maybe some things for the kids like baby formula or diapers, which are expensive, everything's getting more expensive that we can then find through food pantries or organizations that we can donate these to you in your box, so that you have a little bit more at the end of your paycheck, that you can then spend on other things that you might need? And we found that that was super helpful. So we would tell them like laundry detergent, diapers, baby formula, other hygiene products that they might need. And so when they were donated in the box, it really helped them to then take that little money that they would save and use it in other things. So, that's a very small strategy of just working with the people that you're serving to try to see, how can we make your dollar be stretched here.

Luke: I would just add kind of from DMARC's perspective, we do have our mobile food pantry program that launched about six years ago. So that is really trying to get food into areas of high need and low access. We do ask people's addresses as part of our intake, which allows us to find areas that have really high need and low access. So, low access to a grocery store or food pantry, where we can bring that mobile pantry there. Also our delivery program, which launched during the pandemic, but we're continuing on indefinitely and are really trying to expand it right now, thanks to a partnership with DoorDash. So we can have people call in, place a delivery order, and then we'll have that dropped off just zero contact at their doorstep. We do have nutrition guidelines for the foods that we purchase. So, if we get foods donated, they're maybe not the healthiest, those still go out to the pantries, but for the food that we are purchasing, we have some specific nutrition guidelines for non-perishables that's things like, fruit that's canned juice rather than syrup, no salt added for products, but we really try to purchase a lot of fresh produce as well. A lot of that we're getting is not grown in the State of Iowa. There's a new program that's kind of just launching called the Local Food Purchasing Assistance Program. Sorry, I had to check, I know that it's LFPA is the acronym and that's to help food pantries, food banks, food rescue organization, anti-hunger rescue, or anti-hunger organizations connect them with food that's locally grown. I think for like food banks and pantries, locally grown produce costs a little bit more and it's sometimes hard making that argument with board of directors and donors that we wanna spend a little more and get less food but knowing that it's grown locally, I hope the LFPA program will kind of help bridge that gap and make it so that pantries and food banks and other organizations can purchase more locally grown food. And then one other thing I wanna mention is, again, the Double Up Food Bucks Program, that's for people on SNAP, if they're purchasing fresh fruits and vegetables, they can basically get a voucher for more SNAP benefits. And I think a really great example of how that's been implemented is at the Lutheran Services in Iowa, Global Greens Farm and Market here in Des Moines. It's a program that works with immigrant and refugee farmers to access land, and grow foods that they are most familiar with from their home countries. And their farmers market has such a high redemption rate of Double Up Food Bucks and it's growers essentially growing for their community and people can buy foods there that they can't buy at grocery stores. And so, that program got some additional funding during the pandemic from some of these federal funds and that's kind of been scaled back. So again, I think that's a program that could use more investment and could help support our local growers while making sure there's increased access to nutritious food.

Tricia: Great, thank you. We got another question in the Q&A. So how much of a factor is the lack of knowledge or ability or tools to prepare for meals? Examples could be a can opener, utensils, pans, potentially also recipes.

Marlén: I can answer part of this question. What I found is a lot of times they want to learn how to cook meals that are not just high carb, high protein. So they want to know how can I integrate more vegetables or healthy greens in my meal? And I'm gonna be completely honest, with LULAC, we tried with vegan outreach where when we first started the campaign with vegan outreach, we had a lot of backlash actually because people in the community were like, I'm not gonna turn vegan, what is this? Like because of the name of the organization. And we told them our intention is not to convince you to be vegan, our intention is to, through this organization, show you a variety of different vegetables that you might not be familiar with cooking with. And for example, we can teach you how to make couscous or cauliflower rice or other things to show them that you can still incorporate a bit of protein, but if also connecting them to the food chain saying, at least here in Iowa, we have a lot of meat packing plants like Tyson, and they tend to work in a lot of these plants, so when COVID happened, and they saw how they were not given any type of break, they still had to be working while they were sick and there was just a mess that happened in Iowa with the plants. I think it finally clicked with them to see the whole process of food, from when you cultivated, you grow it until you sell it. And they realized that, you know what? I wanna support some of these workers, so I'm gonna try to eat a little bit less meat. That doesn't mean that they were going vegan, but they were just trying to be a little bit more conscious of incorporating other things into their diet. And so we have to have a conversation about it as LULAC and said, no, we're not saying that we are getting everyone to be vegan or supporters of just this way of eating, but we can really help out other things along the food chain if we try to eat more things that are maybe, you have different recipes where they can have no meat sometimes, and it could be still delicious or you have lower portions of meat, and then you can incorporate more things. So, it was more around kind of like a cooking lesson class or learning how to cook certain things like brussels sprout or kale in a different way that they were eager to learn, but they just didn't know how to prepare it. So that was my experience with them in regards to food preparation and food meals.

Luke: At DMARC, we do have a nutrition advisory committee and they create recipes for some things people may not be super familiar with. So we get like kohlrabi from the farmer's market and people are like, what do I do with this? We have those recipes available. I point to this study a lot, but USDA did a study last year on barriers to healthy eating for SNAP participants and actually found that lack of knowledge and lack of equipment rated relatively low compared to people not having enough money. So I'll put that in the chat, but it's one I kind of point to a lot, I think that is a legitimate question, but I think it's sometimes overstated.

Nicki: Oh yeah, and it's also, I think partly because that feels like something we can do and it's something funders wanna fund, like, because, oh, you're educating people, you're not buying food. Yes, of course we can all, but can't we all? Like, you're really, you're not asking the question of, does the food insecure the population of folks facing food insecurity need this education on cooking? And really it's a bigger question, like don't we, I think we all do like if we do, everybody does kind of thing.

Tricia: I'm trying to decide. So we'll do one last question, 30 seconds responses, how's that? I'll give you a very quick and dirty response to time. So what role can local public health departments play in increase in the availability of food resources for members of their community? Nicki, I'll kick it off with you.

Nicki: Okay, I have two quick links and oh, I don't have, I'll paste the links in the chat. Scott County Health Department has a model of a food rescue partnership that I think is an awesome way that a public health organization is helping build connections between food availability and people who need it, so that's awesome. And then a point to Iowa cities, Love Food, Fight Waste program because that actually goes a long way to extending the life of the food in your pantry, and that applies to everybody, people facing food insecurity and everybody else. And it's just a better understanding of what do food dates mean and how can you still eat food and sort of our philosophies around what is good food. So, I will share links to both of those things, but that's what I can think of.

Tricia: Wonderful.

Luke: Another thing that I've seen health departments look at is that some sort of Produce Prescription Program working with county hospitals, I think that's something that could be looked at. I don't know if there's food insecurity kind of screening questions on an intake and some sort of referral system that could also be used, but those are some things I've seen here locally that I think have been done very well.

Tricia: Great.

Marlén: Yeah, I would just add finding programs like SILT where you can let people grow the food that they want and allow them to make income of it as well, and commercial kitchens, there's a lot of food entrepreneurs and vendors that want to go out there and also introduce certain foods to other people and also make a living through it and do it sustainably, and commercial kitchen is another way to do that and build community around food, 'cause that's really how we tend to do a lot of this work, and it's a positive note for everyone.

Tricia: Wonderful, well, we are almost outta time. So again, thank you guys for taking time out of your incredibly busy schedules to share your expertise with us. Just a couple things. I encourage everyone to subscribe to our mailing list, building health equity, you can find the link in the chat. Also, the evaluation form will be in the chat, but we will also be receiving an evaluation in your email based on your registration. Again, giving us ideas on next topics and providing us feedback of what went well and what didn't go well, we would appreciate it. The next webinar, obviously all of our webinars are on the second Wednesday of each month. And our next one, next month on October 12th is LGBTQIA in health equity practices. So, I hope you can join us then and learn more about that. Otherwise again, thank you to all the participants, thank you for the panelists, we appreciate your time and hope you guys have a wonderful day.

Luke: Thank you.

Tricia: Thank you.

Marlén: Thank you everyone.