Feed1st expands food pantries to fill the needs of entire UCM community

With forced closure of pantries due to COVID-19, staff works to open new spaces

The Feed1st program has been helping support University of Chicago Medicine patients and their families since a group of Pritzker Medical School students, Comer Children’s Hospital staff, and UChicago faculty—led by Prof. Stacy Lindau—helped found it in 2010.

Funded by donors and grants, and in partnership with the Greater Chicago Food Depository, Feed1st is a system of self-serve food pantries located within UChicago Medicine—primarily Comer and the outpatient oncology center in the Duchossois Center for Advanced Medicine—that provide free non-perishable goods, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no questions asked. The pantries are available to anyone who might need them—and patrons may take the food for themselves, or for others in their community who might need it.

Although the hospital attracts patients from throughout the Midwest, its primary patient population is from the South Side of Chicago, a community that experiences some of the highest rates of food insecurity in the city.

Food insecurity has been linked to negative health outcomes in both children and adults, prompting the creation of food pantries in response to anecdotal evidence from hospital staff suggesting that parents were going hungry at their child's bedside.

“One of the biggest goals of Feed1st is we work really hard to prioritize dignity for those experiencing food insecurity,” said Meryl Davis, a research assistant in the Lindau Lab and new operations manager for Feed1st.

The arrival of the novel coronavirus created not only a greater need for food because the hospital was serving more patients, but also additional challenges with social distancing measures in place. The staff in the Lindau Lab—as well as Pritzker medical students, the Greater Chicago Food Depository, partnering organizations and individuals—have risen to the challenge to not only sustain Feed1st, but expand it in a time of extreme need.

“When our family lounge pantries in Comer Children’s were closed due to social distancing measures, we anticipated a large need for food, but with our decreased ability to distribute that food, we had to figure out a way to widen our impact, while staying within hospital safety regulations,” Davis said.

With the forced closure of five food pantries in the family lounge areas in Comer, the staff at the Lindau Lab and Feed1st partners worked quickly to provide other solutions to distribute food to those in need by creating two new pantry spaces within UCM. A temporary pantry was completed in the first-floor ambulatory elevator vestibule of Comer, while another was implemented in UChicago’s Center for Care and Discovery (CCD) Sky Café.

The new space in CCD aims to serve all of UCM, especially the staff members on the front lines in the fight against COVID-19, who are working longer shifts and may have less time for grocery shopping.

Feed1st could not exist and expand without the work of its staff partners within UCM, including Sharon Markman, Rachel Marrs, Deb Antes, Kelly Doyle, Tamia Walker, Jennie Ott, Vicky Hackerd, Marina DePablo, Amy Khan, Kathy Goss, Lisa Sandos, Caroline Costello, Peter Abrahamson, Bobby Lester, Monica White, Emily Chase, and Lindsay Forrey; as well as Pritzker medical students Rachel Rolinski and Jae Sone.

Note: The permanent pantry on the Supportive Oncology's 6th floor Infusion Therapy Suite in the Duchossois Center for Advanced Medicine (DCAM) is limited to those already within the suite in order to protect the health of oncology patients.