What 

 

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, immigrant families were more likely to be food insecure than their U.S. citizen counterparts. They are also more likely to not qualify for federally funded nutrition programs. The chilling effect of anti immigration laws in the past and up until the 45th President’s Administration, made immigrant families fear using federally funded programs. 

 

Goals: Create a report that aims to look at barriers to accessing federally funded nutrition programs for immigrant populations in DC. Along with creating recommendations for stakeholders who work directly with immigrant populations to better serve this population. 

 

Research Setup

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Exploratory research

I collected research that provided an overview of the demographics of immigrant populations in DC. Additionally, I collected research on a local and national level of food insecurity issues impacting immigrant populations. 

 

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Stakeholder Mapping and Recruitment 

I collaborated with a Medical Student and we decided to conduct one on one semi-structured interviews with stakeholders who did direct or higher level work with immigrant communities in DC. We wanted stakeholders who do direct work with immigrant communities. There are many organizations in DC that provide immigrant services, so we focused on those who provided emergency services such as food or directly helped immigrants applying for federally funded programs.

 

We started off by using the existing connections that DC Hunger Solutions had for our recruitment efforts alongside my own existing connections that I developed at my job at Community Family Life Services. We then sent cold calls, emails, and went in person to all stakeholders that fit our criteria.

 

Our outreach efforts took place between April to July 2020. We ended up conduction 21 stakeholders collectively. We decided to stop at this number since we exhausted our outreach efforts. 

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Interviews

Secondary research such as local and national policies were examined when creating the semi-structured interviews. The medical student and I met weekly to discuss our secondary research and construct our interview questions. Additionally, doing in-depth research on the organization or institution the stakeholder worked at was analyzed to curate questions for each interview. 

 

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Surveys

Many changes to federally funded nutrition programs were implemented while we were concluding our stakeholder interviews. Due to this, we created a follow-up survey that included questions about the most recent impacts federally funded nutrition programs had on the stakeholder’s work. 

Findings: Though there are many bilingual staff that worked at immigrant centered organizations in DC who we interviewed, none of the bilingual staff spoke another language other than Spanish and English. Through our findings, many stakeholders have a significant Ethipoian population utilizing their resources but lack staff support to properly meet their language needs. A recommendation in this report includes a push for more awareness of the DC Language Access Act. This Act provides non-English speakers the right to utilize translation support in any language they need. None of the stakeholders we interviewed were aware of this Act. We shared the report back with those stakeholders we interviewed and highlighted the awareness of the DC Language Access Act. These organizations can now more effectively support their non-English and non-Spanish speaking populations.

 

Outcomes: Created a report with recommendations as listed above for stakeholders to take direct action in providing better services to their immigrant beneficiaries.