2019 FL-DSSG Summer Internship

Feeding Northeast Florida (FNEFL)’s mission is to improve the quality of life of Northeast Florida by addressing food insecurity, poverty, and poor health through providing nutritious foods and other essential goods to those in need in collaboration with community partners. Alongside our network of food distribution and agency partners, FNEFL provides food and hope to thousands in the community who struggle to feed themselves and their families. Feeding Northeast Florida is the regional community food bank that helps feed children & families, seniors, and veterans struggle to put food on the table. Feeding Northeast Florida is the community’s largest hunger-relief network which connects local grocery stores and farms with community partners who have feeding programs.

FNEFL is fighting one of the most pervasive and wicked of all social problems: hunger. Food insecurity affects people of all backgrounds and can have a devastating effect on the community. From increased rates of illness to higher school drop-out rates, from infant mortality to greater risk of mental disorders and violence, hunger is at the root of many societal problems and is the cause of instability in many homes, neighborhoods, and communities. As the region’s leader in the fight against food insecurity and the center of the hunger-relief network in Northeast Florida, FNEFL is constantly seeking a better understanding of this complex problem and developing new strategies to combat it. One factor that has a significant adverse effect on the fight against food insecurity is “food deserts.” The USDA defines food deserts as communities without adequate grocery stores, feeding agencies, or other food sources within one square mile for urban areas and 10 square miles for rural communities.

According to the USDA’s food desert map, there are at least 55 food deserts in the northeast Florida region. FNEFL would like to know which of these food deserts are in the most critical situations so that programming can be targeted to those neighborhoods and serve the populations most at-risk for hunger. However, with a staff of just 30 individuals and a service area spanning nearly 5,400 miles, FNEFL cannot visit and monitor every community. FNEFL needs reliable, accurate data sets which can help determine where our valuable food and other resources should be directed to help the greatest number of at-risk individuals and families, while also ensuring no neighborhoods in need are overlooked. Some of the questions FNEFL need help with include: Based upon weighted criteria, which food deserts have the lowest quality of life? Which communities located in food deserts can be most improved by an infusion of food and other services? Which communities located in food deserts are most within the ALICE threshold/ in chronic poverty? In which food deserts do we have the fewest agency partners? Which communities located in food deserts have the highest crime rates?

The Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (GTM Research Reserve) is a collaboration between Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Reserve covers 74,000 acres of coastal lands in northeast Florida from Ponte Vedra Beach to Palm Coast. The GTM Research Reserve is one of 29 National Estuarine Research Reserves around the country that focuses on research, education, and stewardship.

The GTM Research Reserve Education Program’s goals are to communicate ongoing, important research to the public, including K-12 students. In particular, middle and high school programs seek to mirror current research departments projects by providing participating students with similar experiments to conduct and data to collect. Four middle and high schools have incorporated gathering data and participation in a conservation centered program. GTM Research Reserve demonstrates to students how important research and science is by having them replicate what actual researchers do.

GTM Research Reserve wants to provide access to student data gathered to researchers to be used as supplemental data that can be baseline in their experiments. Thus, GTM Research Reserve’s social problem is twofold: first, is getting students to care about the environment and the research that is required for conservation efforts by interpreting and replicating actual research projects, and second is ensuring data collected by participating students is accurate and reliable for researchers to assist them in conservation projects.

Starting Point Behavioral Healthcare (SPBH) provides psychiatric, mental health, and substance abuse services to children, teens, and adults in Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia. SPBH operates an Outpatient Community Behavioral Health Treatment Center that works with Nassau County residents diagnosed with these issues to decrease the number of suicides and drug overdoses. SPBH is the only Safety Net Provider of mental health and addiction services for Nassau County and thus serves all populations, regardless of their financial status. SPBH’s Outpatient Substance Abuse Program includes individual counseling that assists with the identification of triggers, develops relapse prevention strategies, helps develop coping skills, provides random urinalysis to detect substance use, and encourages support group involvement. Individuals served also participate in substance abuse treatment groups that focus on a variety of themes, including co-occurring disorders, women’s trauma, and stages of change.

Drug overdoses and opioid overdoses have been on the rise for the past few years. The Florida Governor Rick Scott issued a State of Emergency May 3, 2017, by executive order 17-178 stating the Opioid Epidemic is a severe threat to the State of Florida. In Nassau County, the suicide rate is above the national average, and the number of Baker Acts (committing a person to a mental health facility without their consent) has increased dramatically over the last few years. Healthcare system to address mental health issues is poorly coordinated and fragmented, often resulting in lack of follow-up care, higher healthcare costs, inadequate services, reduced satisfaction for both clients and the care providers, and lower life expectancies. In collaboration with hospitals and mental health facilities in Nassau County, SPBH created the Care Coordination program to identify individuals with serious mental health or substance use issues and provide them a coordinated program of care that addresses their physical and mental health needs.

SPBH’s overall admission rates have increased by 26% over the last year. With increased admissions comes increased need for services and SPBH is struggling to keep up. SPBH has many Tracker datasets to gather individual referral data as well as coordinated care received in collaboration with Nassau County hospital and mental health facilities. SPBH wants to use data to show a clear picture of individuals served and why, as well as outcomes versus outputs. The important questions SPBH seeking answers for are: How to involve the community in solving this problem? How is the opioid epidemic impacting Nassau County? Are there any identified trends in relation to suicides and overdoses?