Support Application for Food Pantries (SAFPAS)
Overview
Food pantries face many challenges, including recruitment and training of staff/volunteers, communications with staff/volunteers and neighbors, providing neighbor choice, and emergency preparedness. We will develop, implement, and evaluate the Support Application for Food Pantries (SAFPAS), a mobile application to address these concerns under normal and emergency operations, and assess its impact on 20 Baltimore food pantries, and on the healthiness of foods received by 360 food pantry neighbors using a randomized controlled trial design. If successful, the tested and refined app will support local food assistance programs throughout the United States.
Project Aims
Phases of Research
- Phase 1: Formative Research
- Phase 2: SAFPAS App Development
- Phase 3: SAFPAS Pilot Evaluation
- Phase 4: SAFPAS Pilot App Implementation
- Phase 5: Post-Intervention Data Collection
- Phase 6: Data Analysis
App Features
We are implementing these app features using a phased approach, beginning with volunteer features,then moving to echoice capabilities, and finally wrapping it up with the emergency preparedness capacities.
Food pantry staff and volunteer features:
Volunteer recruitment, training and scheduling; communication with neighbors and city agencies; emergency preparedness training and communications.
Food pantry neighbor features:
Resources locator, eChoice (online ordering/selection of preferences), nutrition education, emergency preparedness information, communication with pantry.
City and State Agencies:
Communications dashboard with other city agencies and food pantries, real-time situational awareness.
App Wireframes
In our formative research, we have conducted various interviews with food pantry coordinators, neighbors, volunteers, and food bank staff in Baltimore and Detroit on both the form and function of the intended application features. We utilized their feedback and suggestions to inform how we developed this second version of our wireframe images.
Publications
Staff
If you would like the data collection forms please email Joel Gittelsohn.