Hi all. I talked last week to the OES rep in San Luis Obispo County, CA who's running the food program there. They have partnered with the local food bank to handle the food boxing and deliveries (where needed) and the county sent over employees to help with the additional work. In addition, volunteers were being brought on to help there. The office staff was about 8 people to take down resident's needs and call back. I asked if they were using an app to map the people needing food and she didn't know. It didn't sound as if they were, though maybe something like that was being used in the logistics of delivering food. From SLO County directing this be done for seniors to implementation was about 5 days before the first food was going out the door. She said each box was pre-packed for enough food for 4 - 5 days (didn't get if that was one or two people).
Food and Prescriptions for Self-Isolating Residents - San Luis Obispo County
The key here is establishing a central point of contact for food requests and partnering with a food bank or other non-profit, if they exist. Otherwise it'll also be necessary to organize a food effort. I am a major fan of Survey123 and mapping, but I don't think the front end -- where people go to register their needs -- matters all that much. It just needs to be simple, easy to use, and captures the basic information needed. The SLO form was designed using SurveyMonkey.
Operationally, it makes sense to have a map app running to get an idea of where your needs are and to organize efficient delivery. That can be done either directly with Survey123 or by geocoding the addresses as they come in.
The point is, we shouldn't get hung up on the app. The SLO questions are basic and easy to understand and the interface easy to use. There's a phone number to call for those unable to do it online (though I noted that phone number was usually busy, so you need several lines).
In my county, the challenge is establishing a central point of contact for all food needs, triaging out seniors and those who can't or shouldn't go into the community, and deliver to them. Others can come by for curb pickup. Ideally, getting support from your county or some level of government is needed because then you can request and activate county resources -- SAR or CERT teams for delivery or helping packing.
Finally, I talked to our local food bank. She was open to a central point of contact but was very concerned over protecting the privacy of their clients. Asking for food is a major hurdle for many. So some level of security has to be built into the system as well. Equally critical, any effort needs to start with the food bank people first. I would consider them in charge and our job in GIS to support their established workflow and policies.
EDIT: Meds: SLO also delivers meds though, because several of the pharmacies also do so, there was as much need. She said the pharmacies had no problems turning over the meds for deliver as long as they could give the person's ID and DOB. They could not, though, deliver narcotics but those few cases were handled by the pharmacy. WalMart, apparently, would not release the meds but the workaround was to get the client to switch pharmacies.
In my first post, I speculated -- based on an objection from one of our Senor agencies -- that only vetted people could deliver. SLO said that was not a problem for them and, apparently, not a consideration.
