Recruiting

Food Pantries

Sponsor:

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Code:

NCT05880004

Conditions

Improving Healthy Food Access in Food Insecurity Populations in Normal and Emergency Situations

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 18+

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Interventions

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

Study Details

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.

Conditions

Improving Healthy Food Access in Food Insecurity Populations in Normal and Emergency Situations

Study ID

NCT05880004

Start date

Jun 14, 2023

Status verified date

Dec, 2025

Completion date

Nov 30, 2026

Anticipated

Primary completion date

Nov 30, 2026

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 18+

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

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

Study Design

Enrollment

537 participants

Anticipated

Allocation

Randomized

Intervention Model

Parallel Assignment

Primary purpose

Prevention

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

experimental: Food Pantries receiving SAFPAS intervention

Food Pantries in this arm will receive access to all functions of the SAFPAS application

no intervention: Food Pantries not receiving SAFPAS intervention

Food Pantries in the arm will not receive access to the SAFPAS application

Interventions

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.

Primary outcome measure

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

Central Contacts and Locations

Central contacts

Cara Shipley, BS

(410)502-6961cshiple9@jhu.edu

Locations

Johns Hopkins University

Recruiting

Baltimore, Maryland, United States, 21205

Contacts

Joel Gittelsohn, PhD

410-955-3927jgittel1@jhu.edu

Lisa Poirier, MHS

4105026971lpoirie4@jh.edu

More Information

Sponsor

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Last update posted

Dec 17, 2025

Last verified

Dec, 2025

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-10. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on 2025-12-17.