Enhancing Food Security for Families Vulnerable to COVID-19

Fabusuyi, T.; Misra, A.; Martinez, J.; Chen, A.; Jiang, V.; Jagadish, H. V.; Hampshire, R. C.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed some of the underlying inequities in our society. Vulnerable and low-income communities who have typically struggled with food insecurity have been further impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. To make matters worse, transit dependent households in the City of Detroit that rely on SNAP benefits from the government have a 54% probability of not having internet access, reducing the possibility of online food delivery. Thus, the motivation for the Detroit Food Delivery Pilot Program, a prepared meal delivery service for food insecure households during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this program, the City had aided 350 households; over 1,000 unique individuals and has served over 90,000 meals. This had all been made possible through the engagement of 575 volunteers, volunteering over 6,850 delivery miles. Our team helped to identify the magnitude and the needs of food insecure households, then partnered with the City of Detroit to modify existing food programs to address the crisis, and finally, assessed the impact of the program on the target population. Our analysis revealed that approximately 20,800 households will be classified as food insecure in Detroit and only a fraction of this population is benefitting from the food delivery pilot program. However, on average, the concerns about food sufficiency have abated appreciably from the surveys analyzed. Responses from the beneficiaries of the food delivery pilot program were positive though concerns about the travel behavior of individuals, particularly those from COVID-19 positive households remain.