Moving Beyond Giving Free Food: Specific Targeting and Tailoring in Response to Child Food Insecurity.

The Virginia 365 Project1 aimed to address a serious problem—food insecurity among children—through a rigorous evaluation of a deeply intuitive theory of change: that food insecurity is about not having enough food, so providing additional food will reduce food insecurity. To improve access and take-up and reduce stigma, Virginia 365 universally distributed free food to children and families in low-income schools, using afterschool suppers and sending home food backpacks for the weekends—strategies that have become increasingly popular in schools across the country. Counter to hypotheses, the evaluation of Virginia 365 found that the intervention led to higher food insecurity among households, adults, and children, with the only positive outcome being that prevalence of very low food security among children (VLFS-C) was lower in the intervention condition than in the control condition.