Developing a Support Application for Food Pantries (SAFPAS) to Improve Client Access to Healthy Foods & Enhance Emergency Preparedness

• Sponsor: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (Other)
• Overall Status: Not yet recruiting
• CT.gov ID: NCT05880004
• Collaborator: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) (NIH), Oakland University (Other)
• Enrollment: 537
• Location: 1
• Arms: 2
• Anticipated Duration (Months): 25
• Patients Per Site Per Month: 21.5

Study Details

Study Description

Brief Summary

Food pantries face many challenges, including recruitment and training of staff/volunteers, communications with staff/volunteers and clients, providing client choice, and emergency preparedness. The investigators will develop, implement, and evaluate the Support Application for Food Pantries (SAFPAS), a mobile application to address these concerns under normal and emergency operations, and assess its impact on 20 Baltimore food pantries, and on the healthiness of foods received by 360 food pantry clients using a randomized controlled trial design. If successful, the tested and refined app will support local food assistance programs throughout the United States.

Condition or Disease	Intervention/Treatment	Phase
Improving Healthy Food Access in Food Insecurity Populations in Normal and Emergency Situations	Behavioral: Support Application for Food PAntrieS (SAFPAS) - A mobile app that helps food pantries recruit, train and schedule volunteers, offer choice safely, and provides multilevel communications	N/A

Study Design

• Study Type: Interventional
• Anticipated Enrollment: 537 participants
• Allocation: Randomized
• Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)
• Primary Purpose: Prevention
• Official Title: Developing a Support Application for Food Pantries (SAFPAS) to Improve Client Access to Healthy Foods & Enhance Emergency Preparedness
• Anticipated Study Start Date: Jul 1, 2023
• Anticipated Primary Completion Date: Apr 30, 2025
• Anticipated Study Completion Date: Jul 31, 2025

Arms and Interventions

Arm	Intervention/Treatment
Experimental: Food Pantries receiving SAFPAS intervention Food Pantries in this arm will receive access to all functions of the SAFPAS application	Behavioral: Support Application for Food PAntrieS (SAFPAS) - A mobile app that helps food pantries recruit, train and schedule volunteers, offer choice safely, and provides multilevel communications; The primary intervention is a mobile application (app) which supports food pantries to recruit, train and schedule volunteers; provide a safe, remote form of client choice; and provides a means of sharing real-time status information with clients, pantries, food banks, and emergency operation centers. Following formative work, user centered design, and usability testing, the SAFPAS app will be implemented in three stages, where each stage introduces new features. Pantry clients will be encouraged to download the app and learn its key features at the end of baseline data collection. During the first weeks of each stage, training of participating food pantry directors/staff and Maryland Food Bank (MFB) staff will take place - focusing on use of any new features. Initial training will be follow up by proficiency testing.
No Intervention: Food Pantries not receiving SAFPAS intervention Food Pantries in the arm will not receive access to the SAFPAS application

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcome Measures

1. Change in Client FAST Scores as assessed by the Food Assessment Scoring Tool (FAST) [1 hour, 14 months]

   Food Assessment Scoring Tool (FAST)(91) scores of client bags from pantries will be captured by the FAST scoring tool at baseline and post-treatment in a sample of 360 client bags (18 clients customers/pantry in 10 intervention and 10 control pantries, at baseline). Scores can range from 0-100 and are calculated based on the total weight and healthfulness of foods and beverages from 13 categories.

Eligibility Criteria

Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 Years and Older
• Sexes Eligible for Study: All
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Inclusion Criteria:

• Regular client of the food pantry (visit food pantry/order from one or more participating food pantries at least 1 time/month), for the past year, identified by food pantry personnel Adult (18 years or older)

• Willing and able to use a mobile app through a smart phone (or other device) for making electronic Choice (echoice) selections and engaging in other communications

Exclusion Criteria:

• Anticipate moving out of Baltimore in the next 12 months (for pilot study)

• Pregnant (due to changes in diet, weight and body composition)

• Medically or behaviorally at risk as indicated by the food pantry

• No access to a smart phone or other web-enabled device and Wi-Fi

Contacts and Locations

Locations

	Site	City	State	Country	Postal Code
1	Johns Hopkins University	Baltimore	Maryland	United States	21205

Sponsors and Collaborators

• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
• Oakland University

Investigators

• Principal Investigator: Joel Gittlesohn, PhD, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Study Documents (Full-Text)

None provided.

More Information

Publications

None provided.

• Responsible Party: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05880004
• Other Study ID Numbers: 1R34HL161566-01A1; 1R34HL161566-01A1
• First Posted: May 30, 2023
• Last Update Posted: May 30, 2023
• Last Verified: May 1, 2023

• Individual Participant Data (IPD) Sharing Statement: Undecided
• Plan to Share IPD: Undecided
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated Drug Product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated Device Product: No
• Additional relevant MeSH terms: Emergencies

Study Results

No Results Posted as of May 30, 2023