In Oakland, many residents lack access to healthy food, and city policies are making the issue worse

The pandemic was a terrible time for everyone, but it highlighted existing issues that communities desperately needed to address. 

Among the inequalities laid bare by the pandemic was food access. We all saw, or even experienced, the lack of groceries on the shelves at the store in the early days of isolation. People worried about where and how they’d be able to get their food, when going outside brought such peril. The government responded with additional funding to SNAP, one-time funds for meal services, and more money for food banks. But the funding for these services quickly ran out.

When I started working in Oakland in 2022, I quickly noticed the reliance families in the Flatlands had on food banks,  based on how often they were mentioned in conversations with community members. In 2023, I did a story on these increased food needs and was told by local and national sources that the issue would likely not go away soon, given the escalating inflation on common goods at the time.

In a passing comment by a doctor in Oakland, he mentioned that food deserts negatively impact those with diet-related health issues, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. Lack of access to healthy, affordable food meant relying on cheap and unhealthy alternatives, exacerbating chronic illnesses.

This prompted the question that led me to my project: In a city beset by racism, education gaps and wealth disparities, what effect does food scarcity in particular have on Oakland and who is the most impacted?

My first story took me to the Fruitvale neighborhood in East Oakland where migrant workers were scattered at day laborer gathering spots up and down the streets. Here, I teamed up with Street Level Health Project, a nonprofit that provides health care and employment resources to newly arrived immigrants. Through their team, I learned about the symptoms of hunger, including nausea, fatigue, irritability, and shakiness, that some workers experience due to lack of food affordability.

I was fortunate enough to receive an additional engagement grant on top of the reporting funds through the Center for Health Journalism. The funding and mentorship helped guide the project, particularly with the day laborers.

After an unsuccessful visit to day laborer sites to talk to workers about their experiences with hunger, my engagement editor and I brainstormed survey questions for a more formal way to engage with these men. This new survey, which had short and direct questions, allowed me to interview nearly a dozen men in a few short hours. This engagement method opened the doors to conversations about unsteady work, shame for not being able to provide for their families, and fear from targeted attacks from the Trump administration.

Here are a few of the lessons I learned along the way.

Rely on what you know, but be open to new approaches. I thought that because I spoke Spanish and was familiar with working in immigrant communities, getting people to open up would be easy. It wasn’t. Thankfully, I had an engagement editor and community members with experience engaging hard-to-reach people by my side. I was confident in what I already knew and led with that, but didn’t let up when my methods didn’t work the way I thought.

In my second story, I used a solutions journalism approach. I managed to find a free grocery store in one of San Francisco’s poorest neighborhoods. The city had allocated funds to help alleviate food insecurity in the area. The market had a traditional food store set up, which was different to the long and crammed lines that other food banks were known for. Talking to the founders of the market and its customers, I learned that a city that invests in its people can create an environment without shame for those in need of government resources.

Your reporting doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. As journalists, we often hope to uncover some great injustice, but some city resources can actually be helpful to the community. I felt it was important to show success stories of a city putting in millions to stop a growing problem because people need to know that these programs exist so that they can one day be replicated in other areas.

With the help of doctors and community leaders, my last story was able to paint a picture of the bigger problem around food deserts in Oakland. I found that people in East and West Oakland were more likely to experience higher rates of obesity, food insecurity and diabetes. I also mapped the availability of healthy food in West Oakland, a place known for its lack of food access, and found that no such grocery stores exist in that neighborhood. Instead, it’s littered with convenience markets and liquor stores.

Data is your friend. If it weren’t for the charts and maps with all the data showing that health inequities are worsening, and the connection to healthy food, I don’t think the story would’ve been as strong as it was. Data is intimidating, but taking the time to really analyze it will take your stories to another level.

Make sure your sources and audience have ample access to the stories you're interviewing them for. After all the stories were published online, I created an English and Spanish newspaper with my engagement funding, featuring all the related reporting and local resources that I heard people wanted to know more about. By using these multilingual papers, I was able to bypass the digital divide and bring the stories directly to our audience in a way that is accessible to them. We do more harm than good by not showing our completed work to our reporting communities. It gives the impression that they are just a line in a story serving our own agenda.

Ultimately, what all these stories show is that Oakland could be doing far more to address the issues of food insecurity amongst residents.  At Street Level Health Project, the city recently made cuts to the organization's budget that help support staffing and engagement efforts, including providing meals. The threats from the federal government, such as deportation orders and funding freezes, has further put further stress on Street Level, and instilled fear in community members. Oakland has also reallocated funding from local measures for health and wellness groups, such as Meals on Wheels, to instead fund city agencies in a deficit. 

As the city navigates another budget cycle with a multimillion-dollar shortfall, it’ll be the goal of my reporting to hold accountable city leaders who are cutting essential services to needed resources for Oaklanders.