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Qualitative Study of Participation Facilitators and Barriers for Emergency School Meals and Pandemic Electronic Benefits (P-EBT) in an Urban Setting during COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, significantly fewer of New York City’s (NYC’s) 1.1 million public school children participated in emergency grab-and-go meals—heightening the risk of inadequate nutrition security for many of NYC’s most vulnerable residents. This study sought to examine student families...

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Autores principales: Cadenhead, Jennifer W., McCarthy, Julia E., Nguyen, Thanh Thanh T., Rodriguez, Michelle, Koch, Pamela A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9416019/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36014864
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu14163358
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author Cadenhead, Jennifer W.
McCarthy, Julia E.
Nguyen, Thanh Thanh T.
Rodriguez, Michelle
Koch, Pamela A.
author_facet Cadenhead, Jennifer W.
McCarthy, Julia E.
Nguyen, Thanh Thanh T.
Rodriguez, Michelle
Koch, Pamela A.
author_sort Cadenhead, Jennifer W.
collection PubMed
description During the COVID-19 pandemic, significantly fewer of New York City’s (NYC’s) 1.1 million public school children participated in emergency grab-and-go meals—heightening the risk of inadequate nutrition security for many of NYC’s most vulnerable residents. This study sought to examine student families’ facilitators and barriers to participation in the grab-and-go meal service and their experiences with pandemic-electronic benefit transfer (P-EBT) funds, a cash benefit distributed when schools were closed. We recruited 126 parents of children in NYC public schools who had participated in the grab-and-go service. Using opened-ended questions, we interviewed 101 parents in 25 1-h online focus groups. We identified four main themes which broadly impacted school meal participation: communication, logistics, meal appeal, and personal circumstances. Key facilitating subthemes included clear communication, ease of accessing sites, and high variety. Key sub-themes negatively impacting participation included limited communication and low meal variety. Accurate, timely communication; easily accessible distribution locations; and convenient distribution times could have increased participation and satisfaction. For P-EBT, parents welcomed the funds and used them readily, but some experienced difficulties obtaining payments. The simultaneous inclusion of community-based research in the evaluation of emergency feeding programs could improve future outcomes for school meal participation and electronic benefits.
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spelling pubmed-94160192022-08-27 Qualitative Study of Participation Facilitators and Barriers for Emergency School Meals and Pandemic Electronic Benefits (P-EBT) in an Urban Setting during COVID-19 Cadenhead, Jennifer W. McCarthy, Julia E. Nguyen, Thanh Thanh T. Rodriguez, Michelle Koch, Pamela A. Nutrients Article During the COVID-19 pandemic, significantly fewer of New York City’s (NYC’s) 1.1 million public school children participated in emergency grab-and-go meals—heightening the risk of inadequate nutrition security for many of NYC’s most vulnerable residents. This study sought to examine student families’ facilitators and barriers to participation in the grab-and-go meal service and their experiences with pandemic-electronic benefit transfer (P-EBT) funds, a cash benefit distributed when schools were closed. We recruited 126 parents of children in NYC public schools who had participated in the grab-and-go service. Using opened-ended questions, we interviewed 101 parents in 25 1-h online focus groups. We identified four main themes which broadly impacted school meal participation: communication, logistics, meal appeal, and personal circumstances. Key facilitating subthemes included clear communication, ease of accessing sites, and high variety. Key sub-themes negatively impacting participation included limited communication and low meal variety. Accurate, timely communication; easily accessible distribution locations; and convenient distribution times could have increased participation and satisfaction. For P-EBT, parents welcomed the funds and used them readily, but some experienced difficulties obtaining payments. The simultaneous inclusion of community-based research in the evaluation of emergency feeding programs could improve future outcomes for school meal participation and electronic benefits. MDPI 2022-08-16 /pmc/articles/PMC9416019/ /pubmed/36014864 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu14163358 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Cadenhead, Jennifer W.
McCarthy, Julia E.
Nguyen, Thanh Thanh T.
Rodriguez, Michelle
Koch, Pamela A.
Qualitative Study of Participation Facilitators and Barriers for Emergency School Meals and Pandemic Electronic Benefits (P-EBT) in an Urban Setting during COVID-19
title Qualitative Study of Participation Facilitators and Barriers for Emergency School Meals and Pandemic Electronic Benefits (P-EBT) in an Urban Setting during COVID-19
title_full Qualitative Study of Participation Facilitators and Barriers for Emergency School Meals and Pandemic Electronic Benefits (P-EBT) in an Urban Setting during COVID-19
title_fullStr Qualitative Study of Participation Facilitators and Barriers for Emergency School Meals and Pandemic Electronic Benefits (P-EBT) in an Urban Setting during COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed Qualitative Study of Participation Facilitators and Barriers for Emergency School Meals and Pandemic Electronic Benefits (P-EBT) in an Urban Setting during COVID-19
title_short Qualitative Study of Participation Facilitators and Barriers for Emergency School Meals and Pandemic Electronic Benefits (P-EBT) in an Urban Setting during COVID-19
title_sort qualitative study of participation facilitators and barriers for emergency school meals and pandemic electronic benefits (p-ebt) in an urban setting during covid-19
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9416019/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36014864
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu14163358
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