MPA student uses re太阳城娱乐城 to increase food security
Anna 那不勒斯 built a map to deliver fresh produce to North Carolinians in need.
Anna 那不勒斯’ graduate re太阳城娱乐城 focuses on an area she’s extremely passionate about and, 作为北卡罗莱纳人, 一个与家庭息息相关的问题是：粮食不安全.
那不勒斯, a second-year student in the Master of Public Administration program in the 政府管理学院 and leadership annual giving officer in the 大学的发展 Office, 反思她独特的经历.
“作为一名雇员, 特别是在筹款方面, gives me a different perspective of how important this University is to our state and knowing that this is only one of an incredible number of partnerships that exist to change people’s lives and have everybody’s basic needs met,”她说。.
优胜者 2023年影响力奖, 那不勒斯’ re太阳城娱乐城 began as a project for a class with Maureen Berner, 政府学院教授. 伯纳把她和 中央食物银行 & 北卡罗来纳州东部, which needed help understanding whether it was meeting the needs of the people across the 34 counties it serves.
“安娜做得很棒. 从第一天上课开始, she was committed to doing a re太阳城娱乐城 project with a positive, 对北卡罗来纳州产生重大影响,伯纳说。.
那不勒斯 began by looking at distribution data from June to December 2021 and tracked produce sent across the state to pantries per month. She found that 50% of pantries didn’t receive any produce. 在县一级, she evaluated the number of pounds available to each person under the poverty line and found an average of about 6.每人5磅农产品.
“这很令人震惊. When I think about for myself – if I got a head of broccoli, 这可能是我一个月的全部产品,那不勒斯说.
“All of Carolina’s graduate students have the potential to change the lives of North Carolinians. Our job as faculty is to help them unlock that potential. We are so proud of Anna and all our students committed to public service.——莫林·伯纳，政府学院
使用GIS, 那不勒斯 built a map that showed the counties and areas in the state that needed more produce access. The Food Bank immediately used the data to aid three initiatives: the Pop-Up Market program, hospital partnerships and community health trends.
快闪市场项目能够看到, 通过那不勒斯绘制的地图, where pop-up produce markets would best serve communities across North Carolina, 填补食品银行援助的空白.
Partnerships between the Food Bank and local hospitals in the state ensure food availability to patients who wouldn’t otherwise have access to nutritional meals. 那不勒斯’ map was used to identify produce insecure areas to bolster efforts to connect hospital patients with produce.
另外, Food Bank staff were able to connect community health trends with produce distribution to look for correlations.
“Working with Anna’s re太阳城娱乐城 has enabled us to look at how chronic disease rates and produce accessibility may correlate through our service area. It has helped us to launch our own team mapping initiative to dive deeper into disparities within our communities to provide community specific education and work alongside partner agencies to increase capacity for produce distribution,珍妮·瑞安说, nutrition education manager for the 中央食物银行 & 北卡罗来纳州东部.
那不勒斯 hopes that the work she’s done can continue to serve as a resource for the Food Bank to identify where food-insecure people of North Carolina can be better served.
“Knowing how critically important these services are and what a tangible difference they can make is incredibly meaningful, because my goal is to work with issues of systemic poverty and food insecurity,那不勒斯说。. “I feel really thankful to be one of the re太阳城娱乐城ers who’s building partnerships and making a difference for people in our state and hopefully building re太阳城娱乐城 in the future.”
