Responding to COVID-19
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is highlighting food system deficiencies and the fragility of emergency food systems. We expanded existing grants to Feeding America and five Tipping Points Program awardees to assess how food systems and especially emergency food systems, operate and adapt in times of stress.
We saw an opportunity for the Tipping Point grantees to use Feeding America’s data to expand their existing models. We awarded a total of $482,642 to the five grantees to examine the trade-offs associated with policy and programming interventions in response to COVID-19.
About Tipping Points
Health is linked to regional food systems and environment, but not all food systems are created equally. Many low-income residents in American cities lack access to affordable, nutritious foods.
The Tipping Points Program supports projects that identify leverage, or tipping, points in food systems where specific changes can improve overall community health and the economy.
In May 2018, we awarded five grants to multidisciplinary research teams to build mathematical and computational models of how factors and interventions within local food systems interact. Our grantees investigate:
- How components of the food system influence one another;
- Which policy and program interventions work best in specific environments; and
- How the interventions can be changed or combined to optimize their impact on the food system, community health and the economy.