Closing the Summer Meal Gap during COVID-19: AtlantiCare’s Free Summer Meals for Children and Teens

ABSTRACT

Many residents of Atlantic City, New Jersey, a food desert, experience food insecurity. COVID-19, along with summer school closures, compounds this problem. AtlantiCare’s Free Summer Meals for Children and Teens helps combat this crisis. This case study provides an overview of the programs and descriptive statistics highlighting participants and their perceptions. Data indicate a positive experience and a high impact on their food insecurity, nutrition, physical and mental health, quality of time with friends and family, and writing and reading skills. This article illustrates how AtlantiCare is helping to close the meal gap and identifies the need for future efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Nutrition
• food insecurity
• community food program
• healthy meals children & teens
• food desert

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. https://www.fns.usda.gov/sfsp/summer-meals-toolkit under Nutritious Meals > Meal Pattern Requirements > Lunch only

2. When doing some research, you’ll see a wide range of numbers on what a “good” or “average” survey response rate is. The response rates are usually qualified by a specific distribution channel or survey type: 33% as the average response rate for all survey channels, including in-person and digital;¹⁰ >20% being a good survey response rate for NPS surveys;¹¹ A realistic response rate range of 5% to 30% https://delighted.com/blog/average-survey-response-rate

3. While one questions is not a valid measure of food insecurity, this question was asked more of a means to operationalize participants’ perception of the program with their perceived food insecurity (i.e., not their true level of food insecurity, but more of some indication that by participating in this program, they are less worried about (even to a little degree) about having enough food to feed themselves / family, at least for that day.