Hungry Stories: Nourishing food insecurity research that connects dietitians, artists, public health practitioners and communities to co-develop research towards food insecurity solutions

Rates of food insecurity reached an all-time high in 2023, where over 21% of people in BC and almost 9 million Canadians, including 2.1 million children, now live without stable access to food. Our team has spent decades doing research that repeatedly finds that food insecurity is a symptom of poverty that must be addressed by better social policies. Health researchers (like us) naively thought that once we showed the evidence about the causes and solutions to food insecurity, it would change the hearts and minds of policy makers and the public. But research alone has not been enough. Our goal now is to bring together researchers, artists, health professionals and community members to come up with new ways to do research and evaluate its impact that includes making art, writing stories and testing research approaches that will get people talking about and sharing evidence about the causes of food insecurity and about what we can do to make sure no one ever goes hungry. This project will build new research skills among students, researchers and community partners, spark change in research approaches and bring communities and scholars together in new ways to better address the crisis of food insecurity in British Columbia.