Achieving Equity, Effectiveness, and Efficiency in Food Bank Operations: Strategies for Feeding America with Implications for Global Hunger Relief

Orgut, Irem Sengul; Brock, Luther G.; Davis, Lauren B.; Ivy, Julie S.; Jiang, Steven; Morgan, Shona D.; Uzsoy, Reha; Hale, Charlie; Middleton, Earline

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-24418-1_11

Cited by 47 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Based on the findings, alternative models to CFS provision that focus on the recipients’ needs should be assessed, trialled and evaluated. The issues identified call for a ‘systems approach’ to research on hunger relief logistics and supply chain issues ( 51 ) . Applying Salamon’s Theory of Voluntary Failure to the recipient experience highlighted broader challenges facing the system and locates them in a wider political and policy context.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gratitude, resignation and the desire for dignity: lived experience of food charity recipients and their recommendations for improvement, Perth, Western Australia

Booth

Begley

Mackintosh

et al. 2018

Public Health Nutr.

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ObjectiveThe present study explored recipients’ perceptions of food charity and their suggested improvements in inner-city Perth, Western Australia.DesignIn-depth interviews were conducted with charitable food service (CFS) recipients. Transcripts were thematically analysed using a phenomenological approach.SettingInterviews were conducted at two CFS in inner-city Perth.SubjectsFourteen adults.ResultsThe recipients’ journeys to a reliance on CFS were varied and multifactorial, with poverty, medical issues and homelessness common. The length of time recipients had relied on food charity ranged from 8 months to over 40 years. Most were ‘grateful yet resigned’, appreciative of any food and resigned to the poor quality, monotony and their unmet individual preferences. They wanted healthier food, more variety and better quality. Accessing services was described as a ‘full-time job’ fraught with unreliable information and transport difficulties. They called for improved information and assistance with transport. ‘Eroded dignity’ resulted from being fed without any choice and queuing for food in public places, often in a volatile environment. ‘Food memories and inclusion’ reflected a desire for commensality. Recipients suggested services offer choice and promote independence, focusing on their needs both physical and social.ConclusionsAlthough grateful, long-term CFS recipients described what constitutes a voluntary failure. Their service improvement recommendations can help meet their nutritional and social needs. A successful CFS provides a food service that prioritises nutritious, good-quality food and individual need, while promoting dignity and social inclusion, challenging in the current Australian context.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gratitude, resignation and the desire for dignity: lived experience of food charity recipients and their recommendations for improvement, Perth, Western Australia

Booth

Begley

Mackintosh

et al. 2018

Public Health Nutr.

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show abstract

“…However, such techniques likely need to be extended to be effective as trafficking is an ongoing, rather than a single disaster event (He and Zhuang, 2016). Contextual similarities exist between allocating funds for anti-trafficking services and models addressing fund allocation for hunger relief (Sengul Orgut et al, 2016). Similarly, capacity allocation and location models such as Kilci et al (2015) and Li et al (2012) could be adapted to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of public services provided to HT victims and populations vulnerable to HT.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving Access to Housing and Supportive Services for Runaway and Homeless Youth: Reducing Vulnerability to Human Trafficking in New York City

Kaya¹,

Maass²,

Dimas³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Recent estimates indicate that there are over 1 million runaway and homeless youth and young adults (RHY) in the United States (US). Exposure to trauma, violence, and substance abuse, coupled with a lack of community support services, puts homeless youth at high risk of being exploited and trafficked. Although access to safe housing and supportive services such as physical and mental healthcare is an effective response to youth's vulnerability towards being trafficked, the number of youth experiencing homelessness exceeds the capacity of available housing resources in most US communities. We undertake an informed, systematic, and datadriven approach to project the collective capacity required by service providers to adequately meet the needs of homeless youth in New York City, including those most at risk of being trafficked. Our approach involves an integer linear programming model that extends the multiple multidimensional knapsack problem and is informed by partnerships with key stakeholders. The mathematical model allows for time-dependent allocation and capacity expansion, while incorporating stochastic youth arrivals and length of stays, services provided in periodic fashion and service delivery time windows. Our RHY and service provider-centered approach is an important step toward meeting the actual, rather than presumed, survival needs of vulnerable youth, particularly those at-risk of being trafficked.

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“…Many previous works are either limited to offline or non-adaptive algorithms, or consider adversarial online arrivals. Food Bank and Health Care Operations: There is a growing body of work in the operations research literature addressing logistics and supply chain issues in the area of humanitarian relief, health-care, and food distribution [42,39,5,50,28]. The research focuses on designing systems which balance efficiency, effectiveness, and equity.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sequential Fair Allocation: Achieving the Optimal Envy-Efficiency Tradeoff Curve

Sinclair¹,

Banerjee²,

Yu³

2021

Preprint

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We consider the problem of dividing limited resources to individuals arriving over T rounds. Each round has a random number of individuals arrive, and individuals can be characterized by their type (i.e. preferences over the different resources). A standard notion of 'fairness' in this setting is that an allocation simultaneously satisfy envy-freeness and efficiency. The former is an individual guarantee, requiring that each agent prefers her own allocation over the allocation of any other; in contrast, efficiency is a global property, requiring that the allocations clear the available resources. For divisible resources, when the number of individuals of each type are known upfront, the above desiderata are simultaneously achievable for a large class of utility functions. However, in an online setting when the number of individuals of each type are only revealed round by round, no policy can guarantee these desiderata simultaneously, and hence the best one can do is to try and allocate so as to approximately satisfy the two properties.We show that in the online setting, the two desired properties (envy-freeness and efficiency) are in direct contention, in that any algorithm achieving additive envy-freeness up to a factor of L T necessarily suffers an efficiency loss of at least 1/L T . We complement this uncertainty principle with a simple algorithm, Guarded-Hope, which allocates resources based on an adaptive threshold policy. We show that our algorithm is able to achieve any fairness-efficiency point on this frontier, and moreover, in simulation results, provides allocations close to the optimal fair solution in hindsight. This motivates its use in practical applications, as the algorithm is able to adapt to any desired fairness efficiency trade-off.

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Achieving Equity, Effectiveness, and Efficiency in Food Bank Operations: Strategies for Feeding America with Implications for Global Hunger Relief

Cited by 47 publications

References 31 publications

Gratitude, resignation and the desire for dignity: lived experience of food charity recipients and their recommendations for improvement, Perth, Western Australia

Gratitude, resignation and the desire for dignity: lived experience of food charity recipients and their recommendations for improvement, Perth, Western Australia

Improving Access to Housing and Supportive Services for Runaway and Homeless Youth: Reducing Vulnerability to Human Trafficking in New York City

Sequential Fair Allocation: Achieving the Optimal Envy-Efficiency Tradeoff Curve

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