Feeding L.A.’s hungry families
Creating a better way to get food to hungry families during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond—with a first-of-its-kind food system map.
USC Launched 2020
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Partners
We brought together an unusual group of partners to keep Angelenos fed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the height of the pandemic, we engaged Yelp, findhelp, the LA Regional Food Bank, the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, and more to generate critical data on how Angelenos get food on their plates countywide—and help L.A. launch emergency food programs in the communities that needed them most.
Our insights guided the distribution of millions of pounds of food and COVID relief funds across the nation’s most populous county. Now, as record numbers of Angelenos go without steady access to healthy food, we’re launching a groundbreaking food system map and helping the County reach even more people with a model that could eventually shape food programs nationwide.
Meet the project team
John Fanning
Project Manager
Kayla de la Haye
Lead Researcher
Director of USC Food Systems Institute
Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research
“Local efforts to address food insecurity were very successful in the first year of the pandemic. But since 2022, food insecurity has worsened with rising prices and the end of pandemic-era benefits. Our research shows that 1 in 4 L.A. County households (25%) were food insecure in 2024, which is almost double the national rate of 13%.”
Research team
John Wilson
Co-Principal Investigator
Professor of Sociology and Spatial Sciences and Founding Director
Wändi Bruine de Bruin
Co-Principal Investigator
Provost Professor of Public Policy,
Director, Behavioral Science and Policy Initiative
Price School of Public Policy & Dornsife Psychology
Bruce Lee
Co-Principal Investigator
Professor and Executive Director, Center for Advanced Technology and Communication in Health (CATCH)
Health Policy & Management
Abigail Horn
Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Viterbi Information Sciences Institute
Jose Scott
Postdoctoral Researcher
USC Schaeffer Center
Beau MacDonald
GIS Project Administrator
Dornsife Spatial Sciences Institute
Natasha Wasim
PhD Researcher
Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research
Katherine Baker
Postdoctoral Researcher
Price School of Public Policy
Angela Zhang
PhD Researcher
Dornsife Spatial Sciences Institute
Partners
Alba Velasquez
Los Angeles Food Policy Council
Priya Ranganath
L.A. County Department of Public Health
Ali Frazzini
L.A. County Chief Sustainability Office
Ana-Alicia Carr
Los Angeles Food Policy Council
Recent Updates
The federal SNAP-funding mess has made L.A.’s food-insecurity crisis clearer than ever
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