Providing Food and Nutrition Services during the COVID-19 Surge at the Javits New York Medical Station

Military field hospitals typically provide essential medical care in combat zones. In recent years, the United States (US) Army has deployed these facilities to assist domestic humanitarian emergency and natural disaster response efforts. As part of the nation’s whole-of-government approach to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, directed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services, during New York City’s (NYC) initial surge of COVID-19, from 26 March to 1 May 2020, the US Army erected the Javits New York Medical Station (JNYMS) field hospital to support the city’s overwhelmed healthcare system. The JNYMS tasked a nutrition operations team (NuOp) to provide patient meals and clinical nutrition evaluations to convalescent COVID-19 patients. However, few guidelines were available for conducting emergency nutrition and dietary response efforts prior to the field hospital’s opening. In this case study, we summarize the experiences of the NuOp at the JNYMS field hospital, to disseminate the best practices for future field hospital deployments. We then explain the challenges in service performance, due to information, personnel, supply, and equipment shortages. We conclude by describing the nutrition service protocols that have been implemented to overcome these challenges, including creating a standardized recordkeeping system for patient nutrition information, developing a meal tracking system to forecast meal requirements with food service contractors, and establishing a training and staffing model for military-to-civilian command transition. We highlight the need for a standardized humanitarian emergency nutrition service response framework and propose a Nutrition Response Toolkit for Humanitarian Crises, which offers low-cost, easily adaptable operational protocols for implementation in future field hospital deployments.