A social worker discovers that a patient, who will soon be discharged, has screened positive for food insecurity, meaning they struggle to afford or access enough nutritious food to sustain a healthy life. Rather than spending time calling individual community-based organizations (CBOs), the social worker simply posts a request on a website, and within 24 hours food is delivered directly to the patient’s home. Two clicks and the problem is solved.
Welcome to the “FAST” way of doing things.
“We had an undeniable case that this was a need,” said Jaya Aysola, MD, MPH, executive director of Penn Medicine's Center for Health Equity Advancement (CHEA) and assistant dean of Inclusion and Diversity at the Perelman School of Medicine. “Food insecurity is the number one problem in social needs assessments and all health systems in the city are going to the same CBOs. There was a compelling case to coordinate these connections.”
FAST (Food Access Support Technology) is a new platform created by CHEA that connects health systems, food-access CBOs, and minority-owned small businesses to fight food insecurity. The FAST platform is easy to use. A member logs into the password-protected platform and posts a request – for instance, a health system posts a request for food for a patient. FAST will match this request with organizations that can meet their requirements (for example, maybe it needs to be low in sodium). A CBO will claim it and the request is completed. Food banks that have no way to deliver can also post requests – and FAST’s delivery partner, a local Black-owned business, can help.
FAST also captures data from a bird’s-eye view of the city.
“Ask any social worker or CBO and they can anecdotally tell the needs but it’s only their slice of pie. But if everyone’s needs are on a shared platform, the gaps can be identified,” said Ana Bonilla Martinez, CHES, CHEA program coordinator. “We can see all the requests – those that are fulfilled and those that aren’t. Data from FAST tells us where needs are clustered or what’s missing.”
Read more about FAST and other Penn Medicine initiatives supporting health equity in Service in Action: CommunityImpact.PennMedicine.org.