Charitable Food and Nutrition Assistance Programs
Community-based nonprofit programs that provide direct access to nutritious food such as food pantries, mobile markets, and community meals, often serving as a critical and needed supplement to public nutrition benefits.
Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP)
The CSFP is a federal program that aims to improve the health of low-income persons at least 60 years old by supplementing their diets with nutritious USDA foods.
Community Meals
A community meal, operated by a community-based nonprofit, is a gathered, shared dining experience where people come together to consume food, foster social connection, belonging, and relationship-building. These meals can range from casual gatherings to organized programs, often aimed at reducing social isolation, improving nutrition, or supporting vulnerable populations.
Farm Bill
Every five years, Congress reauthorizes the Farm Bill, a comprehensive piece of legislation that authorizes most federal policies governing food and agriculture programs, including SNAP, TEFAP, and CSFP.
Feeding America
Feeding America is the national network organization that supports and coordinates U.S. food banks, advances hunger policy and research, and works to both respond to immediate food needs and address the systemic causes of hunger.
Food Bank
A food bank is a large-scale nonprofit organization that purchases, stores, and distributes food to community partners—such as food pantries, meal programs, shelters, and schools—which then provide food directly to people experiencing hunger.
Food banks also serve as public health partners, stewards of improved nutrition, administrators of government food programs, policy advocates, and capacity builders within their regions. Food banks may conduct nutrition research to support best practices and advance Food as Health work for people experiencing hunger.
Food Bank Coalition of Massachusetts
Four nonprofit regional food banks make up the Food Bank Coalition of Massachusetts: The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts (FBWMA), The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB), Merrimack Valley Food Bank (MVFB), and Worcester County Food Bank (WCFB). The food banks partner with local community organizations to provide food to their communities.
In 2025, this statewide coalition distributed over 145 million pounds of nutrient-dense food, enough to provide 121 million meals, 34% of which were made possible by the Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program (MEFAP) to help feed roughly 900,000 people each month.
These charitable food programs ensure access to healthy and locally sourced food to those that need support. Financial support for this food distribution network must be fundraised annually.
Food and Nutrition Assistance Programs
Government and charitable nonprofit programs that help individuals and families access food and nutrition resources through a combination of public benefits and community-based, charitable food systems.
Food Insecurity
Food insecurity is the experience of being unable to afford enough food to eat or worrying about where one’s next meal will come from.
There are two levels of food insecurity, which are measured using the USDA 18-item food security screener:
- Low food security (formerly called food insecurity without hunger) occurs when a person in a household must reduce the quality and/or variety of their meals or eat foods they don’t like because there is not enough money for food.
- Very low food security (formerly called food insecurity with hunger) is the most severe form of food insecurity and occurs when a person in a household must skip meals or not eat for the entire day because they don’t have enough money for food.
Food is Medicine (FIM) and Food is Health (FIH)
"Food is Medicine" (FIM) and "Food is Health" (FIH) represent an approach integrating nutrient-dense, high-quality foods into healthcare to prevent, manage, and treat chronic illnesses. It shifts focus from purely pharmaceutical treatments to using medical meals, produce prescriptions, and nutritional education to improve health equity and disease outcomes. The keys to success of these programs are clinical integration, nutrition intervention, and consistent access to healthy foods.
Food Pantries
A food pantry is a local, community-based, nonprofit distribution site that provides free groceries (non-perishable, canned, or fresh items) directly to individuals and families in need of food assistance. Operating as a direct-to-client service, they often serve specific neighborhoods and receive food from food banks.
Food Security
Food security exists when all people always have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. It relies on four main pillars: availability, access, utilization, and stability. Food security also implies that individuals do not need to resort to emergency, socially unacceptable, or unsustainable methods to acquire food.
Food Security Infrastructure Grant Program (FSIG)
The FSIG is a state program that supports initiatives that improve food security and ensure equitable access to locally grown, raised, harvested, and caught foods by strengthening Massachusetts’s food supply chain.
Government Food and Nutrition Assistance Programs
Publicly-funded federal and state programs that provide income-based and no-cost nutrition support to improve food access, health, and household economic stability. These include:
- Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP)
- Food Security Infrastructure Grant Program (FSIG)
- Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program (MEFAP)
- Health-Related Social Needs (HRSN)
- Healthy Incentives Program (HIP)
- Hunger Free Campus Coalition (HFCC)
- Women, Infant and Children Special Supplemental Nutrition Program (WIC)
- Summer Food Service Program (SFSP)
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
- The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP)
- Universal school meals
Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) Massachusetts
HIP is a state program that puts money back on EBT cards when households use SNAP to buy healthy, local fruits and vegetables from HIP farm vendors—up to a monthly cap of $40, $60, or $80.
Hunger
Hunger is the experience of personal, physical symptoms people feel when they do not have enough food to eat.
Hunger Continuum
The Hunger Continuum, first developed by Second Harvest Heartland Food Bank, a member of Feeding America in Minnesota, frames food insecurity not as a binary condition but as a spectrum of severity—from anxiety about food access to, in the most extreme cases, the physical experience of hunger. It typically progresses from compromised diet quality to reduced food intake, first affecting adults in the household and, in severe cases, children. This spectrum underscores that hunger is a dynamic, resource-driven condition, shaped primarily by financial barriers, with households moving between levels of severity as circumstances change.
Hunger Free Campus Coalition (HFCC) Massachusetts
The HFCC is a state program that was founded in 2019 and led by The Greater Boston Food Bank, the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute to advance legislative and budget campaigns and permanently establish and fund the Hunger Free Campus Initiative, which would deploy strategies to help reduce student hunger on college campuses.
Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program (MEFAP)
MEFAP is a state program that consistently supplies quality, nutrient-dense foods and locally grown fresh produce to a statewide network of 1,000 emergency food providers.
MassHealth Health Related Social Needs (HRSN) Supplemental Nutrition Services Program
Launched in 2025, the Health Related Social Needs (HRSN) Supplemental Nutrition Services program is a targeted, evidence-based, state and federal initiative for eligible MassHealth (Medicaid) members that integrates food, housing, and utility supports into healthcare delivery to improve health outcomes and reduce inequities. The program addresses unmet social conditions—such as housing instability, nutrition insecurity, and utility needs—through comprehensive care management, with the goal of reducing preventable illness, healthcare costs, and disruptions in coverage driven by social determinants of health (SDOH).
Covered services include housing navigation; short-term housing or rental assistance (up to six months); utility support; and nutrition interventions such as nutrition counseling or education, medically tailored food boxes and meals, vouchers, and “food prescriptions.”
Eligibility is limited to MassHealth members enrolled in an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) who meet specific criteria, including experiences of housing instability, homelessness, or food insecurity.
Medicaid is a joint federal–state health insurance program for individuals with limited income or resources, primarily serving low-income adults, children, and people with disabilities. In Massachusetts, Medicaid is known as MassHealth.
Mobile Markets
Unlike traditional food pantries, mobile markets are free grocery or farmers market-style pop-up markets that promote client choice, and bring high-quality, nutritious food directly into underserved communities, often focusing on specific low-income populations like seniors, veterans, community health center patients, and students.
National School Breakfast Program (NSBP)
NSBP is a federally assisted program operating in public and nonprofit private schools and residential childcare institutions, providing low-cost or free, nutritious breakfasts to children each school day.
National School Lunch Program (NSLP)
NSLP is a federally assisted meal program operating in public and nonprofit private schools and residential childcare institutions. It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost, or free lunches to children each school day.
Nutrition Security
Nutrition security means everyone has consistent, equitable access to affordable, safe, and healthy foods and beverages that promote well-being, prevent disease, and, if needed, treat it, going beyond just enough calories to ensure high-quality nutrients for optimal health, considering availability, access, affordability, and utilization. It builds on food security (enough food for an active life) by adding a focus on the quality and nutritional value of that food, addressing diet-related illnesses and health disparities.
Root Cause of Food Insecurity
The root cause of food insecurity refers to the structural systems of oppression—including racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, and nativism and other forms of institutionalized discrimination based on race, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, immigration status, and income—that create and sustain barriers to economic mobility and consistent, dignified access to nutritious food. These systems operate through policy design, labor markets, housing systems, healthcare access, education, unjust societal norms, and public benefit structures.
The root causes are distinct from their downstream manifestations, such as low wages, housing instability, inequities in transportation and education, limited healthcare access, and other forms of economic precarity, which are the outcomes produced by structural inequity.
Addressing root causes requires systemic change through policy reform, equity-centered practice, and sustained public investment in dismantling structural barriers. Our work involves identifying and interrupting root causes while simultaneously mitigating their downstream effects.
Adapted from the Massachusetts Make Hunger History Coalition “Root Cause of Food Insecurity” definition
Summer Food Service Program (SFSP)
SFSP is a federally funded, state-administered program. The USDA reimburses program operators who serve no-cost, healthy meals and snacks to children and teens in low-income areas.
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
SNAP is a state and federal program that provides benefits to supplement the food budgets of low-income families so that they can purchase healthy food and move toward self-sufficiency.
The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP)
TEFAP is a federal program that helps supplement the diets of low-income Americans by providing them with emergency food assistance at no cost. To operate TEFAP, the USDA provides 100% American-grown USDA foods and administrative funding to states. TEFAP food is distributed by the four regional food banks across Massachusetts.
Universal School Meals in Massachusetts
As of the 2023–2024 school year, all Massachusetts students who are attending a school that participates in the NSLP or NSBP, a statewide program that provides breakfast and lunch, will receive these meals daily at no cost to their families.
Women, Infant, & Children Special Supplemental Nutrition Program (WIC)
WIC is a state and federal program that provides federal funding to states for supplemental foods, healthcare referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and for infants and children up to age 5 who are at nutritional risk.
