Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened food availability, accessibility, and acceptability. Food banks are experiencing increased demand at the same time as operational challenges due to COVID-19. The objective of this study was to assess if and how food banks have utilized web and social media platforms to communicate dynamic information relevant to food security to a growing clientele amid a widespread emergency. We conducted a content analysis of web and social media communications made by 25 Seattle food banks in April and May 2020, which corresponded with the two full months of Washington Governor Inslee’s initial stay-at-home order (March 25–May 31, 2020). We developed and applied a codebook to assess if communications contained information related to food availability, accessibility, and acceptability in the context of COVID-19, as well as other descriptive information, such as changes to food bank operations. Our findings show that food banks in Seattle communicated the most on web and social media platforms about food avail¬ability and accessibility, while they communicated less commonly about food acceptability. Past disasters have exposed the need to include food acceptability in disaster planning to ensure that emergency food can be equitably distributed and consumed by diverse populations. Our results suggest that food banks may wish to periodically assess the main themes of their online communications and the reach of their different platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic as one strategy to facilitate community food security.
Highlights
Food security is defined as occurring “when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO], 1996)
About half of the food banks reported a change to their hours of operation due to COVID-19, and 36% communicated a change in location
Our study indicates that Seattle food banks are taking a variety of steps to ensure that their clients have safe access to emergency food by limiting COVID-19 exposure
Summary
Food security is defined as occurring “when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO], 1996). The FAO identifies three commonly accepted dimensions of food security: food availability, accessibility, and acceptability (FAO, 2006) (Table 1). The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically increased food insecurity in the United States by threatening these three components of food security (Bauer, 2020; Naja & Hamadeh, 2020; Niles, Bertmann, Morgan et al, 2020) (Table 1). Economic barriers like skyrocketing unemployment and lost wages have been compounded by physical barriers such as avoidance of grocery stores to reduce potential COVID-19 exposure (Kochhar, 2020; Niles, Bertmann, Morgan, et al, 2020). We have seen an intensification of prepandemic racial and ethnic disparities in food insecurity, for Black and Hispanic households (Wolfson & Leung, 2020b)
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