Sofia Carreno, HUP’s nursing professional development specialist for community engagement, center, with Ayodele Adegbola, a Penn Medicine corporate administrative fellow, left, and a staff member with Philabundance. The food pantry received its first shipment of 500 pounds of food in June.
The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP)’s food pantry will be able to provide food and related resources to many more patients and families facing food insecurity, thanks to a new partnership with Philabundance, the area’s largest hunger relief organization.
As a member organization of Philabundance, the food pantry in June began receiving a minimum of 500 pounds of dry and frozen food per week, with the option to expand to dairy, meat, and produce in the future. Up to now, the pantry has largely been supported by donations from Penn Medicine staff.
The pantry started as a pop-up pandemic relief effort in 2020 for HUP staff facing new financial hardship, for example due to a partner’s job loss or the need for added child care, but the vision has expanded over the past two years under the leadership of Sofia Carreno, MSN, RN, HUP’s nursing professional development specialist for community engagement, and Jessie Reich, MSN, RN, the director of Patient Experience and Magnet programs. In addition to employees, the pantry now serves postpartum patients, Intensive Care Nursery families, and patients from the Helen O. Dickens Center for Women, and will be expanding its reach to other service lines, Carreno said. Available food at the pantry ranges from canned tuna and green beans to peanut butter and brown rice. The pantry currently gives out 150 to 200 bags of groceries each month, containing enough food to feed a family of four for at least a day.
Chronic hunger affects millions of families and is connected with many poor health outcomes, including higher levels of chronic disease, higher probability of mental health problems, more hospitalizations, and longer inpatient stays. Besides food, the partnership with Philabundance provides HUP with access to a number of other programs, including a project that provides pantries with materials such as shelving and signage, along with recipes and videos on healthy cooking.
“As a community food relief organization for over 30 years and part of the Feeding America network, they are the food relief experts,” Carreno said. “Joining their network allows us to take advantage of some of the great programs they offer, for the benefit of our patients and families.”