A study evaluating Your Local Pantry membership
| ISRCTN | ISRCTN81905657 |
|---|---|
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN81905657 |
| Secondary identifying numbers | SALIENT-YLP |
- Submission date
- 04/03/2025
- Registration date
- 05/03/2025
- Last edited
- 05/03/2025
- Recruitment status
- No longer recruiting
- Overall study status
- Ongoing
- Condition category
- Nutritional, Metabolic, Endocrine
Plain English summary of protocol
Background and study aims
Around 24% households in England experienced moderate to severe levels of food insecurity in 2023-2024. Food insecurity has multiple negative effects on diet quality, health, and mental wellbeing.
There has been an expansion of different types of community food projects in response to rising levels of food insecurity in the UK. One popular and rapidly expanding model is community food clubs (also referred to as social supermarkets, food pantries and community shops, among other names). Community food clubs, usually set up by not-for-profit or social enterprise organisations, offer low-cost membership fees and a retail shop-like environment where members can purchase their own food at significantly lower costs compared to the mainstream retailers. Often these models aim to promote dignity and choice in comparison to the perceived disadvantages of how food support is provided by food banks.
Reports from organisations operating these models suggest many benefits of membership including self-reported improvements in members’ household finances, increased consumption of fruit and vegetables, and a positive effect on mental health. Social outcomes, such as having an opportunity to volunteer and feeling part of a community have also been emphasised. Academic studies of these models have included qualitative studies or surveys of users’ experiences. However, challenges arising from an unreliable food supply due to a high reliance on surplus food redistribution have also been found.
From our examination of the grey and academic literature, there is a lack of independent high-quality evidence on the impact of membership in community food shop models using robust evaluation designs. Validated measures of outcomes of interest relating to food insecurity, dietary quality, and mental health and well-being have also not been utilised in this context. Prior studies have also relied on self-reports from members after they have already been members for some time, making findings vulnerable to selection and recall bias. To our knowledge, there have been no studies that have compared outcomes between people who have transitioned into membership compared to those who remain without a membership after making an application for one. Using a natural experiment design will allow estimation of the effects of membership that are closer to the causal effects.
The overall aim of this study is to understand the impact of joining a community food shop, namely, Your Local Pantry (YLP), on food insecurity and other health and well-being outcomes. The primary research question that will be addressed is “Does YLP food pantry membership reduce food insecurity?”
The secondary research questions that will be addressed are:
Does YLP food pantry membership…
• …increase mental well-being”?
• …improve dietary quality”?
• …reduce financial hardship”?
• …reduce loneliness”?
• …increase self-rated general health”?
• …increase personal sense of dignity”?
• …reduce non-food material hardships”?
Who can participate?
Adults aged 18 years and over who are newly applying for membership in a Your Local Pantry food pantry in England
What does the study involve?
When people apply to join a YLP food pantry, they either move directly into membership or experience some delay before being granted membership. The delay may be administrative or because they are placed on a waitlist where the pantries are over-subscribed for membership. This study will exploit the natural flow onto YLP membership and waiting lists to examine outcomes at 2, 6 and 10 weeks after membership application.
People newly applying for memberships in the YLP network will receive information about the study when they submit their application. They will have the opportunity to express their interest in participating to the research team. They will then be screened for eligibility, and if eligible, receive study materials and be invited to participate. Participation involves filling out questionnaires, either online or over the phone, as soon as possible after they’ve made their application to YLP, 2 weeks after application, 6 weeks after application and 10 weeks after application.
Differences in the change in outcomes from baseline (no membership) will be compared between those who moved into membership and those who remain without membership. Using waiting times as a natural experiment allows us to estimate the causal effect of YLP membership. We will compare these causal estimates with estimates from a simple before-after design, comparing outcomes of participants after they obtain membership with outcomes of the same participants at the time of application, i.e. before obtaining membership. The primary outcome is food insecurity. Secondary outcomes include mental wellbeing, diet quality, financial hardship, loneliness and personal sense of dignity.
An accompanying process evaluation will include qualitative interviews with study participants at the end of the 10-week follow-up period to understand experiences of membership and perceived impacts. Interviews with pantry staff and volunteers will seek to understand mechanisms of impact and how these potentially vary across sites.
What are the possible benefits and risks of participating?
There are minimal risks to participating. People will become YLP members as they normally would following an application for a membership. For some, this may happen after being placed on a waiting list. For others, memberships will be granted right away. Participating in this study will not change the “first come, first served” allocation of memberships practiced across food pantries in the YLP network.
Participating involves completing four questionnaires. These take 10 to 20 minutes for participants to complete so may be inconvenient for some participants. Some of the questions address sensitive topics, but participants can choose to not answer any questions they do not feel comfortable answering.
Potential benefits of participating include receiving thank you shopping vouchers for completing questionnaires and the knowledge that they are contributing important insights about the impacts of community food shop models on food insecurity and other outcomes.
Where is the study run from?
The study is being run from the University of Liverpool (UK) with help from Your Local Pantry, who will promote the study to people newly applying for memberships
When is the study starting and how long is it expected to run for?
September 2023 to September 2025
Who is funding the study?
The study is funded by the Economic Social Research Council (UK) as part of a larger project called SALIENT
Who is the main contact?
Dr Rachel Loopstra, rachel.loopstra@liverpool.ac.uk
Contact information
Scientific, Principal Investigator
3.10 Whelan Building
University of Liverpool
Liverpool
L69 3GB
United Kingdom
 ORCID ID |
0000-0002-7541-6209 |
|---|---|
| Phone | +44 (0)7350432927 |
| rachel.loopstra@liverpool.ac.uk |
Public
Department of Public Health, Policy and Systems
Whelan Building, 3rd Floor
University of Liverpool
Liverpool
L69 3GB
United Kingdom
| Phone | +44 (0)7350432927 |
|---|---|
| s.ganbavale@liverpool.ac.uk |
Study information
| Study design | Natural experiment (non-randomized) waitlist control study |
|---|---|
| Primary study design | Interventional |
| Secondary study design | Non randomised study |
| Study setting(s) | Charity/Voluntary sector |
| Study type | Treatment |
| Participant information sheet | 46941_PIS.pdf |
| Scientific title | What is the impact of Your Local Pantry membership on food insecurity, dietary quality and well-being? A natural experiment evaluation |
| Study objectives | The primary hypothesis is that Your Local Pantry (YLP) food pantry membership will reduce food insecurity. Secondary hypotheses are that YLP food pantry membership will: increase mental well-being; improve dietary quality; reduce financial hardship; reduce loneliness; increase self-rated general health; increase personal sense of dignity; and reduce non-food material hardships. |
| Ethics approval(s) |
Approved 24/01/2025, University of Liverpool Central University Research Ethics Committee A (University of Liverpool, Foundation Building, Brownlow Hill, Liverpool, L69 7ZX, United Kingdom; +44 (0)151 794 2000; research.ethics@liverpool.ac.uk), ref: 14579 |
| Health condition(s) or problem(s) studied | Food insecurity |
| Intervention | The intervention is YLP food pantry membership. In exchange for a pay-on-use fee that ranges from £3.50 to £7 depending on the pantry, membership provides access to a weekly “shop” for ten items of a variety of food, including frozen and chilled food, meat, dairy, vegetarian and vegan products, alongside a supply of tins and packets of long shelf-life foods, as well as fresh fruit and vegetables and bakery items from the members’ YLP food pantry. The value of items acquired after paying the usage fee has been estimated to be £21. In addition, most YLP pantries offer additional services at their sites and access to these is part of YLP membership (described below). It is not clear a priori whether pantry membership affects outcomes immediately or gradually. Therefore, in our analysis we will consider membership as a binary variable (access or no access), where the effects are assumed to be immediate for members because of both the felt and real benefit of being granted access to a pantry, and as a continuous variable, where the number of days of membership is measured, and where benefits are expected to increase over time as members become more familiar with the pantry and increasingly benefit from its services. The comparison group for participants with YLP membership are people who have applied for YLP membership but have not (yet) obtained it. As explained in the study design above, we will make this comparison in two different ways. In a longitudinal before-after design, we will compare the outcomes of participants after they obtain membership with the outcomes of the same participants when they applied but had not yet obtained membership. In this case, the control group are the same people as the treatment group, but at a different point in time, shortly before they obtain membership. Second, we will use the variation in waiting lists across pantries as a natural experiment and compare participants who were on a waiting list but have now obtained membership with other participants who are still on a waiting list. In this case, the treatment and control groups both consist of people who have recently applied for membership and were placed on a waiting list, but the control group are those who happened to apply to pantries with a longer waiting list. Determination of whether or not someone goes onto a waiting list depends on the capacity of the food pantry where the person applied for a membership to accept new members. When pantries do not have the capacity for new members (i.e. already at their maximum capacity, which is related to the quantity of food stock they have to distribute, operating hours, and staff and volunteer capacity), applicants receive an email or phone call telling them they have been placed on a waiting list due to a lack of space. Importantly, memberships are granted on a “first-come, first-served basis”, and no other criteria are used to allocate these. Therefore, time spent on a waiting list should be random, and there should be no systematic differences between people who apply and are granted a membership quickly and those who apply and have to go on a waiting list for a substantial amount of time. |
| Intervention type | Other |
| Primary outcome measure | Food insecurity measured by the Food and Agriculture Organisation's Food Insecurity Experience Scale at 2 weeks, 6 weeks and 10 weeks post application for a YLP membership |
| Secondary outcome measures | 1. Mental health and well-being score, as measured by the Short (7 item) Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Health and Wellbeing Scale 2. Diet quality score as assessed by a short 14-item FFQ validated in the UK adolescent and adult population (Crozier et al. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society. 2021;80(OCE5):E186; Shaw et al. Nutrition Journal. 2021;20(1):5) 3. Proportion reporting ability to keep up with bills, debts, and credit commitments (adapted from the UK Wealth and Assets Survey) 4. Proportion reporting loneliness as measured by the UCLA 3-Item Loneliness Scale 5. Proportion reporting good or very good health as measured by a self-rated general health question used in UK-based surveys (e.g. Family Resources Survey) 6. Treated with dignity, measured using a single item from a self-perceived dignity measure: Hitlin S, Andersson MA. The Science of Dignity: Measuring Personhood and Well-Being in the United States: Oxford University Press; 2023 7. Proportion reporting going without one or more other non-food essential items based on Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Destitution Measure All measured at 2 weeks, 6 weeks and 10 weeks post application for a YLP membership. |
| Overall study start date | 01/09/2023 |
| Completion date | 01/09/2025 |
Eligibility
| Participant type(s) | Service user |
|---|---|
| Age group | Adult |
| Lower age limit | 18 Years |
| Sex | Both |
| Target number of participants | 300 |
| Key inclusion criteria | 1. Individuals who filled out an application form to join a participating YLP pantry 2. Older than 18 years of age, no upper age limit 3. YLP membership application forms are only provided in English, however, applicants who don’t speak English may receive help to receive the form from YLP staff or volunteers or friends or family. To include participants who don’t speak English but who have applied for a YLP membership, over-the-phone interpretation services will be made available for them to find out about the study and fill out questionnaires |
| Key exclusion criteria | 1. YLP sites located outside of England 2. Sites that opt not to take part in this study 3. Pantries that have been operating for 3 months or less at the start of data collection 4. Pantries that vary from YLP’s standard model, including allowing members to shop more than once a week and/or deviating from the standard allocation of seven heart and three diamond items 5. Individuals who are not able to provide informed consent 6. Due to the use of remote data collection in the study, individuals who are unable to complete questionnaires online or over the phone with a researcher |
| Date of first enrolment | 04/03/2025 |
| Date of final enrolment | 31/07/2025 |
Locations
Countries of recruitment
- England
- United Kingdom
Study participating centres
Water's Edge Business Park
Modwen Road
Salford
M5 3EZ
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
Sponsor information
University/education
Foundation Building
Brownlow Hill
Liverpool
L69 7ZX
England
United Kingdom
| Phone | +44 (0)151 794 2000 |
|---|---|
| iphresearch@liverpool.ac.uk | |
| Website | http://www.liv.ac.uk/ |
"ROR" |
https://ror.org/04xs57h96 |
Funders
Funder type
Government
Government organisation / National government
- Alternative name(s)
- ESRC
- Location
- United Kingdom
Results and Publications
| Intention to publish date | 01/09/2026 |
|---|---|
| Individual participant data (IPD) Intention to share | Yes |
| IPD sharing plan summary | Stored in non-publicly available repository |
| Publication and dissemination plan | 1. Planned publication in a peer-reviewed journal 2. Report and/or study briefing targeting practitioner and policy audiences |
| IPD sharing plan | Supporting data generated during the study will be available from the University of Liverpool's Data Catalogue (https://datacat.liverpool.ac.uk/) after an embargo period from the date of data collection to allow for the publication of research findings. |
Study outputs
| Output type | Details | Date created | Date added | Peer reviewed? | Patient-facing? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Participant information sheet | version 2 | 15/12/2024 | 04/03/2025 | No | Yes |
| Protocol file | 04/03/2025 | 04/03/2025 | No | No | |
| Statistical Analysis Plan | 04/03/2025 | 04/03/2025 | No | No | |
| Study website | Project website for participants | 04/03/2025 | No | No | |
| Study website | Wider project website | 04/03/2025 | No | No | |
| Other files | Sites of recruitment | 05/03/2025 | No | No |
Additional files
- 46941_SAP_04Mar25.pdf
- 46941_PROTOCOL_04Mar25.pdf
- 46941_PIS.pdf
- 46941 pantry information.xlsx
- Sites of recruitment
Editorial Notes
04/03/2025: Study's existence confirmed by University of Liverpool Central University Research Ethics Committee A.
