Franklin County
Community Hunger Mapping
Community Hunger Mapping
In 2023, one in eight residents of Franklin County shouldered the heavy weight of not knowing from where their next meal would come. In total, nearly 19,000 people were food insecure in the county; of these, almost 5,600 were children. The burden of food insecurity is not evenly spread across the county. Though it weighs upon citizens of every municipality and neighborhood across the county, the degree to which it does varies based upon geography, demographics, and many other factors.
This Community Hunger Mapping Report aims to understand the dispersion, experience, and causes of food insecurity across and within Franklin County. Community-engaged research methods were used to depict the food insecurity landscape and the charitable food network’s response to it with detail, nuance, and compassion. Specific emphasis is placed upon highlighting the perspectives of neighbors experiencing food insecurity as expressed through surveys conducted at food pantries and other community resources across the county, as well as semi-structured one on one interviews.
Listening sessions and surveys allowed the inclusion of the perspectives of charitable food providers, and Central Pennsylvania Food Bank (CPFB) researchers visited many of the pantries in the county to collect observational data about the charitable food network holistically. Quantitative analysis of secondary data available from both public and private sources, including the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and CPFB’s own internal records, is included throughout the report to provide important context for the qualitative data. Together, these mixed methods allow the final report to paint a complete picture of the Franklin County charitable food system.
Increased understanding of local food insecurity is a distinct advantage, but this report seeks to do more; its goal is to guide meaningful, lasting improvements in the experiences of food insecure neighbors and to make progress toward ending hunger in the long term. To that end, this report contains dozens of actionable recommendations that, if implemented intentionally and collaboratively by food pantries, anti-poverty organizations, health systems, and other stakeholders across Franklin County and beyond, can help us together build a south central Pennsylvania where no one goes hungry.
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1 – Increasing the Accessibility of the Charitable Food System
The Franklin County charitable food system reduces very low food security through each visit neighbors make to pantries, with a larger difference made among those who visit more often. Very low food security rates drop from 49% of visitors with incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty line who visit a pantry 12 times or fewer over the course of a year to 24% for those who visit 13 times or more.
Approach 1.1: Adjustment of Restrictive Pantry Policies
The impact the charitable food system has in reducing hunger can be maximized by ensuring that people have access to a minimum of two pantries or one pantry twice per month. While nearly every food insecure individual in Franklin County has access to at least two pantries within a 15-minute drive, this strong geographic access is often limited by restrictive policies implemented by agencies across the county, including:
Nearly half of Franklin County pantries require ID, proof of address, or both as a prerequisite to service. CPFB researchers witnessed several pantry visitors being turned away from food pantries because they forgot or did not have an ID with them while attempting to receive service. Refusing service based on lack of ID runs counter to state and federal rules and, importantly, may result in severely negativ Approach e experiences that can dissuade people from visiting pantries again in the future. Only a self-declaration of need certifying that a household has an income less than 185% of the federal poverty level is required to receive state or federally funded food; people with higher incomes can receive donated food. Identification can be requested to ensure a smoother intake process but may never be required.
Some agencies in Franklin County explicitly bar neighbors from visiting more than one pantry. Restrictions on the number of pantries a household may visit in a month are likely noncompliant with state and federal requirements and can increase experiences of hunger for vulnerable households, since many neighbors need access to at least two pantries to avoid experiencing hunger on a regular basis.
Complex rules and policies at pantries can add potential conflict points between staff or volunteers and neighbors. No two pantries are alike, which means that neighbors must learn an entirely new set of rules from volunteers who already understand the process fully. This difference in understanding, along with the unequal power dynamic inherent in pantry distributions, may cause experiences of judgment. Trauma-informed care training and the placement of suitable volunteers in neighbor-facing roles could help ensure everyone is treated with respect. Pantry workers should give visitors grace around mistakes and confusion.
Modifying the restrictive pantry policies outlined above would help to reduce conflict and negative experiences neighbors may experience when interacting with the charitable food system. While most pantry visitors reported positive experiences with pantries, nearly 10% said they had experienced judgment while visiting a pantry, which is the highest rate measured in any Community Hunger Mapping project to date. There was, however, substantial variance between pantries in reported experiences of judgment, which reflects the effect specific pantry policies may have in preventing or engendering conflict.
Approach 1.2: Increased Collaboration between Pantries and Other Service Providers
Pantries are among the lowest-barrier social service providers and may be the first places people turn to when they need help. Food pantries are therefore uniquely positioned to act as key resource connectors.
Program referrals and opportunities for individuals to connect with case management services were largely absent among pantry providers. Furthermore, there is a major lack of awareness of available pantry resources among community members who are food insecure but are not currently utilizing a pantry. In a listening session and in interviews, Franklin County pantries reported that they were either not aware of other resources to refer neighbors to or said they did not believe case management resources were available to the neighbors they were serving. Additionally, referrals to SNAP, WIC, or other key government programs were not robust.
These gaps signify that there are opportunities for further collaboration between pantries, which are among the best targeted locations for resource outreach, and local providers of other resources. Key stakeholders could include health systems, organizations with case management functions, and SNAP and WIC outreach organizations. Franklin County is already working to assess food access with GIS mapping, but it is important to strengthen neighbor-facing guides to the resources available in the area, including food pantries.
Pantries expressed a desire for increased collaboration between pantry providers, including the sharing of resources where possible. Pantry coordinators appreciated the opportunities to connect with one another as part of the hunger mapping process, and several of these interactions led to concrete and productive joint ventures across agencies.
Leading stakeholders should work to bring pantries together regularly to create open and regular lines of communication among pantries in Franklin County so they can learn from each other, share resources, and solve problems together. An initial issue to tackle together could be the expansion of evening and weekend hours to areas of the county that currently lack access.
Franklin County pantries cited funding as the number one issue they face, as limited funds force them to find ways to serve more people with fewer resources. This can lead to cutting back on services provided. Collective advocacy for additional state and federal resources to support pantries in the county is critical to ensuring pantries have enough resources to serve every neighbor who comes to their door seeking help.
Approach 2: Ensuring Strong Participation in Key Government Nutrition Programs
Nutrition programs like SNAP, WIC, school meal programs, and summer meal programs all provide significant support to Franklin County’s food insecure neighbors. Opportunities to increase program participation exist throughout the county, and pantries are some of the best places for outreach.
Approach 2.1: Increase SNAP Participation through Targeted Outreach
Franklin County is middling in SNAP participation relative to the state overall. There are major opportunities to increase participation via two major pathways: geographic outreach and pantry-based outreach. ZIP Codes covering the northern and southern ends of the county are home to major SNAP participation gaps, and countywide, less than half (49%) of pantry visitors said they received SNAP, even though nearly all (95%) are likely to be eligible based on income. Given these low participation rates among visitors and their low-barrier services, pantries are well-targeted locations for SNAP outreach; those in high-priority ZIP codes are particularly likely to be effective.
Approach 2.2: Focus WIC Outreach on Southern Franklin County
Franklin County has one of the lowest WIC participation rates in the state, with an estimated coverage rate of 55%, nearly 30 percentage points lower than neighboring Adams County. WIC outreach is critical to increasing participation. In Franklin County, outreach should focus on several ZIP Codes in the southern part of the county, with emphasis on Waynesboro and Greencastle as they both have child participation gaps of more than 250 likely-eligible non-participating children.
Approach 2.3: Expand Participation in School Meals and Access to Summer Food
School breakfast participation in Franklin County is around 10% below the statewide average even though a high percentage of schools offer alternative breakfast models. Schools should continue to offer these alternative models and consider the most effective model, breakfast in the classroom, to improve participation.
In the summer, there are opportunities to increase access to federally funded summer meals across the entire county, especially in Greencastle and Fannett-Metal School District. Most areas qualify as rural, which could allow them to make use of the recently implemented rural non-congregate meal service waiver for USDA SUN meal programs.
Approach 3: Addressing Upstream and Intersecting issues with Food Insecurity
Food insecurity rarely occurs on its own; rather, it is the product of and associated with a variety of upstream and intersecting issues. In Franklin County, the most salient issues identified by food pantry visitors include limited income, housing insecurity, chronic health conditions, and limited mainstream financial access.
Low wages and limited benefit levels increase the likelihood that households will experience food insecurity, including very low food security. Unemployment is a minimal contributor to charitable food demand in Franklin County, as more than 80% of pantry visitors stated that their main source of income was full-time work, Social Security or pension, or Disability or SSI. Households who stated that they receive Disability or SSI are the most likely to experience very low food security (54%); this is likely due to low benefit levels, increased expenses, and reduced ability to work. Households who reported full-time work as their main income source are the least likely to experience very low food security. However, wages remain low; 55% of full-time workers reported incomes below $2,000 a month ($24,000 a year or $11.50 an hour).
Housing insecurity is a major driver of very low food security, as around 60% of households who worried about or experienced a forced move in the last year also faced very low food security. A staggering 10% of pantry visitor households experienced a forced move in the last year, and 22% are currently worried about being forced to move in the next year. Considering these findings, pantries should ensure that foods tailored to the needs of unstably or marginally housed individuals are available. Beyond this, the charitable food system could promote and/or provide referrals to utility assistance programs like LIHEAP or collaborate with other organizations to offer eviction and foreclosure mediation and prevention programs.
Nearly a quarter of all pantry visitors (24%) in Franklin County are unbanked, meaning they lack access to a checking or savings account. Hispanic pantry visitors are the least likely to have a bank account, with nearly two in five (37%) having reported being unbanked. The charitable food system can work with local financial institutions and nonprofits to connect unbanked populations to mainstream financial services.
There are significant opportunities for health systems and the charitable food system to collaboratively address very low food security as a social determinant of health, including via Food as Medicine initiatives. More than half (54%) of pantry visitor households in Franklin County had at least one member with a diet-related chronic health condition, including 35% with diabetes and 30% with heart disease.
