Food justice within US-based social work literature: a 20-year scoping review

ABSTRACT

Social workers within the United States (US) have addressed food issues since the profession’s origin in the late 1800s. Today, the acute problem of food insecurity continues to concern social workers. However, solely addressing food insecurity is not holistic nor sufficient to adequately promote food justice. Nevertheless, most food assistance resources familiar to and employed by social workers address food insecurity and lack structural change components to fully address food injustice. This paper reports the findings of a scoping review of US-based social work scholarly literature from 2000 to 2020 to understand the profession’s engagement with food justice, identify implications for social work practice and education, and promote the development of new knowledge that may result in more social work led, dynamic, and comprehensive food justice. The findings reveal a dearth of unequivocal discourse among social work scholars in the US concerning food justice, highlighting a significant knowledge gap within US-based social work scholarship. This gap underscores the potential for enriching social work education to equip students adequately for addressing food justice in practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Food justice
• food insecurity
• food justice scholarship
• social work profession
• social work education
• social justice

Disclosure statement

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