Authors: Jihyun Shin, Kristina Brant, and Justine Lindemann
What is the issue?
Pennsylvania is home to the fourth largest population of veterans in the country, with 700,000 residents having served in the military. According to the USDA's Economic Research Service, working-age veterans are 7.4% more likely to face food insecurity than working-age nonveterans. Among the veteran population, food insecurity rates are especially high for female veterans, Black and Hispanic veterans, and disabled veterans.
In this brief, we outline barriers that veterans face accessing emergency food assistance, highlight initiatives and innovations that food banks and pantries have developed to reduce these barriers, and provide policy and program recommendations to support and expand these practices.
Barriers serving veterans
Because of the higher-than-average rates of food insecurity experienced by veterans, many food banks and pantries see veterans as a priority population to reach. In our interviews with food bank and pantry staff, respondents pointed to a few perceived barriers which may hold local veterans back from accessing their emergency food services.
- Internalized stigma: In brief #9 of this series, we outline how internal embarrassment or shame around needing food assistance can deter people from approaching pantries for help. Food bank and pantry staff noted that veterans may have especially high degrees of internalized stigma. One respondent, a soup kitchen coordinator and veteran himself, explained that veterans often have a higher degree of internalized stigma around seeking emergency food assistance due to a deeply held value of self-sufficiency and a reluctance to ask for help.
- High rates of housing instability and disability: Veterans also experience high rates of housing insecurity and disability—two factors which can make accessing emergency food assistance even more difficult. We describe challenges specific to serving people with disabilities and people facing housing instability in briefs #16 and 17 of this series, respectively. Veterans who also face these intersecting challenges may be even more difficult for food banks and pantries to reach.
Initiatives and innovations
- Military Share programs: Some food banks have begun Military Share programs—a food distribution specifically aimed at current military service members and veterans. These food distributions take place onsite at organizations that serve veterans, such as American Legion posts, VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) posts, and VA (Veterans Affairs) hospitals. Food banks bring food boxes directly to these locations on specific days, typically once a month, for current military service members and veterans, or their family members, to pick up.
- Targeted outreach: One food bank relayed that they had begun advertising campaigns to reach out to the local veteran community. By using images of people in uniform in their advertisements and making special announcements on Veterans Day and Memorial Day, the food bank hoped to destigmatize and normalize the use of emergency food assistance among veterans.
- Incorporating veteran staff and volunteers: Earlier in this brief, we quoted a soup kitchen coordinator who told us about the internalized stigma that veterans hold towards asking for help. He explained that one way he works to overcome this stigma is by connecting with other veterans on a personal level. By describing to other veterans how he, as a veteran himself, asks for help, he believes that he helps to normalize help-seeking among the local veteran community.
"There's a large population that is not getting help because, 'Well, we just don't ask for help,' kind of a mentality… You have a large percentage of the population that are veterans in our communities—there's no way that they're going to ask for help. It's part of their DNA." (Pantry coordinator)
Policy and program recommendations
- Building on the success of Military Share programs, food banks without such programs could look to existing programs as examples and begin their own. Food bank member organizations like Feeding Pennsylvania and other Feeding America affiliates could provide food banks technical or financial assistance in beginning these programs.
- The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services could incorporate images of current military service members or veterans and messaging to veterans in their outreach regarding SNAP and other food assistance. Such images and messaging could help to destigmatize food assistance among the veteran community.
- The Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and local veterans' organizations like VFWs and American Legions could provide resources regarding food assistance and other kinds of social assistance programs both online and at their physical locations. Such advertising would serve to spread information about where to seek help and destigmatize help-seeking.
A PDF is available upon request, please email Tara Homan at tls32@psu.edu.
References:
- Central Pennsylvania Food Bank. (2023). "Food Insecurity Among Working Age Veterans."
- National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. (n.d.) "Veteran Homelessness."
- Vespa, J., & Carter, C. (2024). "Trends in Veteran Disability Status and Service-Connected Disability: 2008-2022". Washington, D.C.: United States Census Bureau.
Suggested Citation: Shin, Jihyun., Brant, K., & Lindemann, J. (2025). Connecting Underserved Groups with Emergency Food Assistance: Veterans. (Brief #18). Penn State's Center for Economic and Community Development. aese.psu.edu/cecd
This report is part of a series of policy briefs on the provision of emergency food assistance across Pennsylvania. The full report can be accessed at Rural Pennsylvania, or by sending a request directly to the authors. This series was created by Penn State’s Center for Economic and Community Development in partnership with Penn State Extension. For questions about this report, please contact the authors at jlindemann@psu.edu or kbrant@psu.edu.
This study was funded by a research grant from the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, an office of the Pennsylvania State Government. Additional support comes from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Multistate Research Project #W5001 Rural Population Change and Adaptation in the Context of Health, Economic, and Environmental Shocks and Stressors (#PEN04796, Accession #7003407).
Penn State's Center for Economic and Community Development is an applied research and engagement center dedicated to strengthening local and regional development in Pennsylvania and beyond. The Center works with and for communities to address pressing issues they face by connecting them with information about the issues facing their communities. The Center is housed in the College of Agricultural Sciences' Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education.
