Feed1st Program

By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Feed1st Program

In 2010, a group of University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine medical students, University of Chicago faculty, and Comer Children’s Hospital staff started the Feed1st program after one of the hospital Chaplains discovered many parents were going hungry at their child’s bedside during a hospital stay. The goal of the Feed1st program is to address hunger in the healthcare setting and minimize the stigma surrounding food insecurity.

The Feed1st program operates 11 food pantry sites throughout UChicago Medicine’s facilities, including the adult, pediatric, inpatient, and outpatient areas of academic health system’s South Side medical campus. The pantry sites are strategically located in emergency departments, patient waiting areas, family lounges, and a hospital retail cafeteria. The program primarily serves community members from the South Side of Chicago, which has some of the highest food insecurity rates in the city; however, the pantry sites are available to everyone in the UChicago Medicine community, including staff.

It takes a village to operate a hospital pantry program at this scale.  The hospital and individual departments provide Feed1st with funding support and space for pantry shelves and storages; Clinical staff champions, medical students, undergraduates, and other volunteers keep the pantry sites and storages stocked regularly and well maintained.

The food in the pantry sites is provided by the Greater Chicago Food Depository. The UChicago Medicine Garden Committee also provides fresh produce during harvest seasons throughout the year. The Feed1st Community Advisory Committee, comprised of parents, patients, concerned community members, hospital administrators, faculty, students, and others, plays a consistent role in ensuring the program meets the needs of the people we serve. Feed1st engages clinical staff in individual departments to help monitor and restock pantry shelves and communicate with patients about the program.

the Feed1st program had distributed more than 94 tons of food to more than 88,000 people since opening in 2010. The UChicago Medicine Garden Committee has provided more than 6,000 pounds of fresh produce to the Feed1st pantry sites since May 2022. The Feed1st program also released a toolkit on how to launch a no questions asked food pantry system. To read the newest version of the Feed1st toolkit, click here.