Interventions for Pittsburgh Food Deserts

Goals

• Learn about the needs of Pittsburgh residents living in food deserts through literature reviews and in-person interviews

• Create an intervention that will help reduce dependency on food banks and soup kitchens in the long-run

Outcome

We proposed two types of interventions: one that improves food literacy within the community by sharing recipe cards and another that reduces client dependency on food bank resources overtime through the creation of a volunteer co-op program.

Project Overview

Our process began with a literature review to understand the state of food accessibility in Pittsburgh and the existing interventions used to combat the issue. We then conducted interviews at local food pantries and soup kitchens. We documented the stories of clients and volunteers, deepening our knowledge of how food banks operate, their long-term objectives, and everyday challenges. We made an affinity diagram of the qualitative data, outlined user personas, and journey maps.

To better understand what motivates people to volunteer or donate to an organization, we sent an online survey out to local Pittsburgh residents. Entering the ideation phase, we constructed “How might we…” statements to frame our proposed interventions. Together, we storyboarded two possible interventions guided by the research, stakeholder needs, and key findings.

Problem · Lack of Access to Healthy Food

Low-income Pittsburgh residents living in food deserts struggle to obtain fresh and healthy produce on a regular basis. We aimed to research this issue and develop a sustainable intervention that teaches clients to be independent in how they obtain their food so that they are not relying on food banks or kitchens to provide for them in the long-run. These issues are important for us to care about because the negative impacts affect more than just the people who struggle to obtain fresh produce on a regular basis. 

“Individuals living more than a mile away from a grocery store is considered to be in a food desert. For rural residents, the nearest store is located more than ten miles away. In 2012, [it was found] that 47% of residents live in food deserts.” – McCart Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Literature Review

Lack of transportation makes it difficult for residents to access food banks.

Pittsburgh’s topography makes it hard for people to visit the grocery store, both physically and psychologically. Many areas lack access to public transportation. The lack of access to transportation gets in the way of doing so. In-store marketing techniques also are a problem as they tempt people into buying unhealthy products for cheap prices. Low-income individuals are more likely to purchase frozen foods than fresh produce.

Pittsburgh has many food banks, food pantries, and community gardens.

Grow Pittsburgh starts community gardens in areas that lack access to affordable produce. Back of the House provides teenagers with jobs at local restaurants so they can improve their cooking skills and learn about healthy eating habits. Just Harvest provides Fresh Access Food Tokens to customers who buy groceries with an EBT card. The tokens can be used to buy food at local corner stores stocked with healthy options.

These organizations are meant to act only as a temporary band-aid.

The current interventions reach only a local network of people specific to location; they act as a band-aid fix. The residents need long-term access to healthy, fresh produce. This issue affects more than just those who are directly dealing with food insecurity or living in food deserts. Providing food to the people is only one form of a solution but does not get rid of the problem entirely.

High-Level Goals

Based on our research examining the conditions of food deserts in Pittsburgh, we chose to focus on three areas in particular: food insecurity, food education and affordable access.

1. How do we improve access to public transportation across Pittsburgh for those in food deserts? People struggle to obtain healthy foods because they cannot make the trip to the store. 

2. How can we encourage better decision making when it comes to selecting and preparing what foods to eat? We want to better educate people about the benefits of eating healthy. 

3. How can we create a sustainable and cost-efficient solution that regularly brings healthy food to people in food deserts? We want to explore the benefits of bringing food to the people instead. 

Contextual Inquiries

Our team spent two weeks conducting contextual inquiries at nearby food banks and pantries. Going in-person to these locations allowed us to get to know visitors on a more personal level. We asked questions about transportation and food accessibility. We were particularly interested in knowing what kind of struggles they faced in getting to and from the food banks or kitchens. What kind of pain points did they hit in their journey to obtain fresh produce?

Which food banks and kitchens were visited? Who was interviewed?

Jubilee Soup Kitchen was established 36 years ago to help feed the poor and has been open every day since. The kitchen now provides additional services including economic counseling and day care. We interviewed the director of Jubilee Kitchen and talked to two customers.

The CHS Food Pantry works to provide food to families and individuals who need it the most. They serve all individuals in Pittsburgh and provide medical care for clients as well. We interviewed Mel Cronin, Community Programs Coordinator at the pantry.

St. Paul of the Cross Monastery runs a food bank open every Friday for people to visit from all neighborhoods. We interviewed four clients along with the directors. To learn more about their daily operations and clients’ expereinces, one of our teammates volunteered twice following our main interview.

Takeaways & Anecdotes

#1: Some customers struggle with mobility challenges or are recovering from health problems.

TJ, a client at St. Paul’s food pantry, lives in Arlington and suffers from Back Arthritis and Spina Bifida. He goes to Giant Eagle to purchase food. The store is located 2 miles from his home. This distance is his greatest challenge to obtaining healthy produce. He says that he “only [goes] grocery shopping if the weather is good and if [he feels] well”. Since he can’t afford to ride the bus, he has to walk everywhere. His health conditions greatly limit his mobility, both in terms of the distance he can walk and the amount of groceries he can carry per trip. Slippery winter roads also pose a threat to him as he fears dangerous accidents.

#2: Food options are reduced to what can be bought with their own money or food stamps.

Hot food, for example, cannot be purchased with food stamps. TJ describes himself as a “junk food guy”. When he relied on food stamps, he could not purchase hot food, so he defaulted to buying “pop or Red Bull, chips and dip” or frozen items like $5 pizzas at 7/11. When TJ worked as a chef, he would make a variety of healthy meals for himself from salads to battered chicken. He rarely had issues getting access to fresh ingredients. These days, TJ can barely cook meals for himself because he can’t afford to purchase items like salad dressing and has lost access to food stamps.

#3: Customers like to take the foods they are familiar with and don’t tend to try new options.

Tom runs the St. Paul’s Monastery food bank. He’s found that people usually prefer canned fruit and vegetables over fresh produce options. Tom told us that the “beets are not in a can and are not wanted because they don’t look as appetizing”. He also noted that “canned pumpkin is not a mover.” Germaine admits that she was used to make selective decisions about the foods that she got at food banks and pantries: “I used to be picky, but I found a new favorite food here. I love cauliflower now”. Her taste palette has expanded since visiting the kitchen.

#4: Food banks and kitchens serve as a place to socialize with community members in the area.

Germaine, a mother of two, visits the Jubilee Kitchen when she can because she enjoys the sense of community. She pays $5 for a ticket and makes several transfers along the way. She told us that going to Jubilee Kitchen meant much more to her than simply getting a meal to eat. For her and many others, the food kitchen is a second home. She goes there to see her friends, feel entertained and catch up about what's been going on in the neighborhood.

Personas & Journey Maps

Creating user personas help ground us with realistic contexts and scenarios to design for as we move forward in our process. Each persona expresses a clear set of motivations and challenges to keep in mind. Journey maps are visualized sequences of customer actions, separated into different stages that identify what a customer is thinking for feeling at a certain period of time.

Do certain parts of the journey take longer than others? When are they frustrated? These maps provide a holistic view of what it's like to obtain fresh produce from the perspective of the customers. These diagrams allow us to identify touch points and pain points where design opportunities might exist.

Affinity Mapping

As our next step, we created an affinity diagram to categorize the quotes and key findings we gained from the contextual inquiries. We sorted the quotes into small sections, adding a unique label to each category. This step really helped us understand, as a group, what kind of overall themes and problem areas we were working with in trying to create a solution. For example, one of the yellow category labels read: “Donations are unpredictable based on frequency and type”.

Our group could reference the quotes underneath that support the claim and then work from there to try and ideate what kind of interventions could be put in place to mitigate this unpredictable frequency in donations. We look at these themes and ask ourselves: What can we do? How can design be applied to this situation?

“How Might We” Statements

Reframing the context of the problem helped us discover new approaches to the issue which we had not considered before. In parallel to this, we made storyboards that were aimed at answering the proposed questions. Storyboards help communicate to design ideas by putting them in the context of a relatable or believable narrative.

After assessing our findings around food accessibility, education, and sustainability, our team thought of interventions that could potentially improve the experience of visiting a food bank or kitchen for all stakeholders involved. We proposed a new way for clients to exchange information on nutrition and meal preparation within the community through the use of recipe cards. We also developed a co-op framework that could be adopted by food banks to reduce visitor dependency on resources in the long-run.

Opportunities · Education & Employment

Organizers want to improve food literacy within the community but struggle to do so in an appealing manner. One-on-one sharing of simple recipes, however, has proven to be effective in getting people to try new foods in their meals. Knowing this, we ideated our first intervention which provides a way for clients to exchange recipe ideas with one another, with the goal of reaching those who are less aware of food literacy.

Food bank organizers desperately want to reduce client dependency in the long-run. Many clients have trouble finding work to support themselves, while others have gotten used to visiting food banks for meals. Reducing dependency on food banks is a challenge that needs to be solved, but is a multi-faceted problem. Our second intervention would give clients the chance to volunteer at the food bank as a way to gain work experience in the short-term and get gift cards to spend at local stores.

Reflections

If we had another month to work on this, we would have liked to return to the food banks to gather feedback on these proposals. For example, could we actually identify a third party group that would consent to us using reallocated money for gift cards? If we can't, what would be a possible alternative?

Given the time constraints we had to work within, we did not get to test our ideas with clients. It would have been nice to work with one of the organizations and implement one or two of the ideas for a trial period. We want to ensure that the solutions are feasible and most importantly, beneficial to everyone involved. There is still so much more research to be done but our work has helped give stakeholders something to think about.