Post-Gazette: A Bellevue couple battles food insecurity with a clever prescription
A program born of the pandemic has evolved to help double SNAP benefits
When Albert Ciuksza closes his eyes, he can still see the refrigerators of unbranded milk bottles and the off-putting starkness of the 1980s neighborhood WIC store in his hometown of El Paso, Texas.
Childhood summer afternoons were fueled by free lunch program sandwiches and juice boxes, and he occasionally overheard conversations in his home about how to make rent that month.
But he didn’t see himself as a “WIC kid.” Living in an economically depressed area, those weren’t the habits of “poor people.” It’s what everyone did.
Parallel to his own feelings, however, he could sense his mother’s loss of dignity — her embarrassment — especially while shopping in separate spaces from those financially better off.
In a stroke of serendipity, Albert, with his wife Mallory, a St. Clair Health physician, now live across the street from the Bellevue Farmers Market. It’s also a place where some of the foods are still unbranded, though only because they were hand-plucked from the ground or a vine just hours before, alongside other offerings often described as “artisan” or “small-batch.”
In ways, it couldn’t be further from the WIC store Albert knew. But, in addition to the market accepting federally funded and state-distributed Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits, the couple made sure those benefits could go further by creating a program that doubles SNAP dollars, thereby encouraging economically diverse shoppers to seek fresh, local whole foods.
The program, a 501(c)3 nonprofit referred to as Food Assistance Match (FAM), is also available at the Bethel Park and Cranberry farmers markets. Before it had nonprofit designations, a website and a vision for widespread growth, it was a meals initiative, for and by neighbors, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
“We realized there were a lot of people in the service industry in our community,” Albert said. “With the pandemic and shutdowns, they were going to be harder hit. It wasn’t a work-from-home situation.”
With his position as a serial entrepreneur and vice president of leadership and development for a business consulting firm, and Mallory’s work as an internist and primary care physician for St. Clair Health, the couple had the know-how and drive to extend their privilege.
They gathered 250 volunteers — including a retired food service professional down the street — and sought financial support from foundations and individuals to form the newly dubbed “Feeding Neighbors Program.”
At its peak, it delivered over 3,000 meals per week to around 300 families within an eight-mile radius of Bellevue, with 7.5% of its residents living below the poverty line without pandemic pressures. But it was the four recipients on the Ciukszas’ own block that shifted their thinking: The food insecurity that surrounded them wasn’t a short-term, COVID-driven problem. It was a chronic issue.
Of the $100,000 raised for FNP, $10,000 remained. With it, the Ciukszas pivoted toward a SNAP match program during the shortened Bellevue Farmers Market season in 2020, which temporarily tripled those benefits, allowing each SNAP dollar to spend like $3.
Then and now, a shopper with SNAP benefits — a group of two million Pennsylvanians as of January — simply approaches a vendor, orders their desired foods, and asks for a receipt. They take the receipt to the FAM volunteer table, where all of the logistics of SNAP benefits and the exponential effect of FAM are calculated, no sign-up or extra steps required. The volunteer then visits the vendor’s table, picks up the goods and delivers them to the patron, allowing them to dodge any stigma associated with returning to the vendor themselves.
The program repeated through crowd funding in 2021, amounting to $12,000 worth of SNAP-doubling benefits. The next year, through a community development grant and individual support, they matched $32,000 in Bellevue alone.
And in 2023, the Ciukszas welcomed the Bethel Park Farmers Market to the FAM.
“Learning about the FAM program, it was really a no-brainer,” said Lindsay Sibert, a Bethel Park community administrator who brought SNAP benefits and FAM to the market simultaneously. “Not only are you able to feed your family and know where it’s coming from, and know that it’s coming from a great source, but you’re supporting these small farms and businesses, which in turn, you’re supporting your community even further.”
Those thoughts might be intuitive — buying from local merchants keeps dollars local — but there’s also data to support them.
“In places that have programs like this, 62% goes back to the local economy, and 99% goes back to the state economy when you have SNAP dollars spent this way,” Mallory said. “We also have data that more than 75% of people who use match programs report buying or using more fruits and vegetables, and 80% say their family’s health improved.”
Part of what drives the Ciukszas to expand FAM’s reach, with the long-term goal of policy change, is the inconsistent availability and application of match programs.
Unlike approximately 36 other states, Pennsylvania does not have a statewide SNAP match program.
Through The Food Trust, a SNAP supplement program known as Food Bucks provides coupons for fresh fruits and vegetables.
And in some states, such as West Virginia, SNAP benefits — and therefore any match programs — apply only to fresh fruits and vegetables, and cannot be applied to local honey or farm fresh eggs at markets, for instance.
“As a clinician, I would argue that an egg is a complete source of amino acids. It’s an excellent source of protein for you and your family,” Mallory said. “It’s easy. It’s yummy. It’s a great option.”
Mallory’s position as a local physician is yet another facet of FAM that serves the Bethel Park Farmers Market well, Sibert said.
“It brings a lot of credibility because it’s not just people involved with the market who are telling you to shop there,” she said. “You trust your physicians to give good advice on how to lead a healthy lifestyle, and I think in spearheading this campaign, she’s really practicing what she preaches.”
Some of what she preaches is emphasized by St. Clair Health’s 2022 Community Health Needs Assessment, which showed that nearly 45% of the health system’s community is affected by high blood pressure and nearly 38% by high cholesterol.
“Most of my patients suffer from some form of metabolic syndrome: obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure,” Mallory said. “These are problems often related to our diet. They aren’t 100% related to diet, but we know that if people are eating fresh fruits and vegetables, we are improving their health in myriad ways.”
That’s why her “prescriptions,” especially for food-insecure patients, sometimes include a visit to the Bethel Park Farmers Market, where access to fruits and vegetables is double what SNAP recipients would enjoy at a big box store.
With that Ciuksza-created positive reinforcement, her recommendations aren’t just lip service. They’re public service.
“Through the last four years, we’ve seen the attitudes toward health care professionals change dramatically,” she said. “For a minute, I was a frickin’ hero. Then, I was lying about vaccines. Now, you’re not so sure about those prescription medications.
“The stigma around health care and the distrust that people are walking into my clinic with is sometimes overwhelming, but when patients know that I do this work, barriers come down. And they come down because they know that I’m doing my best to solve a fundamental need and problem in their community. And inherent in that conversation is I care enough about them to do that work.”
First Published August 3, 2024, 5:30 a.m.