Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Food pantries provide free food to households, including those receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), thereby buffering food insecurity in communities. The SNAP-Ed program identified food pantries as a targeted setting for policy, system, and environmental (PSE) changes to promote healthy eating. This study sought to identify factors influencing capacity and readiness to implement healthy eating PSE interventions in food pantries. METHODS: We conducted qualitative interviews with 26 residents and 12 SNAP-Ed staff from rural and urban counties in Ohio to identify themes and indicators related to community readiness and organizational and practitioner capacity to implement healthy eating PSEs in food pantries. Themes and related indicators were generated based on inductive and deductive coding of interview transcripts. Eleven food pantry and nutrition experts prioritized and weighted themes and indicators during a virtual consensus conference. RESULTS: Five themes emerged, and expert-derived weights (scaled low, 0 to high, 1) reflect the perceived importance of each to implementation of healthy eating PSE interventions in food pantries; (1) food pantry capacity and logistics [0.253], (2) networks & relationships [0.228], (3) community nutrition practitioner capacity [0.212], (4) food pantry user characteristics [0.156], and (5) stigma and stereotypes [0.1.52]. Overall, 17 indicators were identified across these themes. CONCLUSIONS: Food pantries are unique settings for implementing healthy eating PSE interventions, thus successful and sustained PSE change will require a tailored approach that considers food pantries capacity, needs and opportunities within the community, and capacity of community nutrition practitioners, including SNAP-Ed. The themes and indicators identified through this study will be incorporated into an online assessment tool to support tailored approaches that meet communities where they are. FUNDING SOURCES: Financial support for this work was provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – Education (SNAP-Ed).