Planning: CIVIC-PG Track B: A Community-Designed Intersectional Food Access Rights for Marginalized communities (IFARM) Hub

University Of Utah, Salt Lake City UT

Investigators

Abstract

Food and housing security are linked contexts necessary for health, stability, and sustainability. In response to community-identified needs to improve food- and housing-related outcomes for people experiencing homelessness (PEH) in an urban setting. This planning grant will bring together expertise from PEH, civic, and academic collaborators to pilot a community-designed, systems-based intersectional resource hub. An Intersectional Food Access Rights for Marginalized communities (IFARM) Hub will be co-designed with PEH and community members, and co-located and linked with services, programs, and initiatives supporting various aspects of food and housing security. The IFARM Hub will bridge gaps between essential food resources and community needs for those experiencing food and housing insecurity in the underserved Glendale community on Salt Lake City’s west side. The IFARM Hub will use participatory, systems-based, intersectional approaches and methodologies to aggregate housing, health, social, transportation, and technology services to meaningfully increase healthy food and resource access. In collaboration with PEH and the nonprofit Green Phoenix Farm (GPF), the project will connect PEH with essential community resources, including nutritious foods, by extending GPF’s services and integrating it with other community-based organizations while concurrently assessing increased reach to broader housing- and food-insecure populations. Siting the IFARM Hub at the GPF, which employs women experiencing homelessness, leverages existing strengths of the farm’s off-grid solar array, which powers the farm’s refurbished shipping containers and reclaimed materials, including a walk-in cooler, produce packaging facility, computer lab, and office. The IFARM Hub will be housed in this shipping container-based infrastructure, inclusive of vertical space, to increase production, extend GPF’s seasonal growing capacity, and deepen integration with local communities. The proposed research will work closely with PEH, community groups and key stakeholders to design mixed-methodology assessment plans to appraise the feasibility and effectiveness of the IFARM Hub. We will identify indicators of success from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives, with particular attention to needs identified by PEH, and anticipate increased access to nutrient-rich foods by larger numbers of PEH will be a key effectiveness outcome. Maintaining fidelity to community-engaged research practices, our research will identify key stakeholders in underrepresented communities, define success in health and social outcomes according to PEH and community collaborators, derive key metrics of health and social outcomes, identify current connectivity gaps, identify technological resources necessary for a sustainable community hub, and identify key facilitators and processes necessary for scaling the IFARM Hub for PEH to other comparable urban settings. This project is part of the CIVIC Innovation Challenge which is a collaboration of NSF, the Department of Energy's Vehicle Technology Office, and the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate and Federal Emergency Management Agency. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.