Moving beyond access: a multidimensional community food security assessment framework

Food insecurity remains a persistent and severe challenge across communities in the United States, disproportionately affecting low-income households that rely on food assistance programs. Food security has traditionally been conceptualized through four pillars: availability, access, utilization, and stability; but recent scholarship calls for expanded frameworks that more fully capture the complex factors shaping food security outcomes. Existing measurement approaches typically rely on population- or household-level data and often place disproportionate emphasis on the access pillar. In this case study, we develop a community-level food security assessment framework that integrates all pillars to better understand the capacity of existing food assistance programs to address food insecurity. A four-step process was used to apply the framework in Duluth, Minnesota: identifying eligible food assistance programs, conducting a survey to collect program data, benchmarking responses for comparative analysis, and applying analytical methods to generate community-level insights. Findings indicate that the access pillar is relatively well addressed; however, community food security could be strengthened by greater emphasis on long-term strategies, particularly those focused on food utilization. This approach demonstrates how diverse food assistance programs collectively contribute to multiple pillars of food security while also revealing gaps within the local food environment. These insights can inform future investments, policy development, and program design to advance community food security, health, equity, sustainability, and resilience.