Field Reports
Barriers to Benefits: The New State of SNAP Access in Pennsylvania
Tylah Harrison,
Emerson Fellow
Published 2023-2024
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
In 2013, Just Harvest completed a report that identified specific barriers that were preventing people from applying for and retaining essential food assistance in Pennsylvania. This report seeks to examine the state of SNAP access for people across the state today, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and other shifts that have occurred in the last decade. Through a survey, interviews and focus groups with people with lived experience with SNAP, and collected insights from other food advocates in the state, this report explores the administrative, communication, and various other obstacles that make it more difficult for Pennsylvanians to reliably access SNAP.
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Publication tags: Field Reports
Tylah Harrison, originally from Durham, North Carolina, graduated in May 2023 with a B.S.P.H. in Health Policy and Management and a minor in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Always interested in the intersection of public health and medicine, Tylah is passionate about addressing the social determinants of health in marginalized communities that are disproportionately burdened by chronic disease. As an undergraduate student, she explored interventions to address food insecurity among hypertensive adults as a research assistant, studied the politics of school nutrition and universal free meal campaigns in the U.S., and completed an internship with the CDC Division of Diabetes Translation. Tylah hopes to increase her knowledge about the national and community-level efforts currently underway to address poverty and food insecurity, and identify new avenues for healthcare professionals to be involved as advocates.
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