May 17, 2022

WATRIBAL supports food equity and access for tribal communities during COVID-19

The Population Health Initiative hosted students and faculty on May 3, 2022 for a presentation of, “WATRIBAL Project: Assessing food security and traditional foods access in WA State tribal communities during the COVID-19 pandemic,” by Dr. Victoria Warren Mears, Northwest Tribal Epidemiology Center Director, and Dr. Jennifer J. Otten, Associate Professor for the UW Dept. of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences & Food Systems Director. The presentation was part of the Let’s Talk Pop Health series, which is a series by the Population Health Initiative that aims to highlight interdisciplinary population health-related education and training activities across UW’s three campuses.

The WATRIBAL Project was one of 14 projects that received a COVID-19 population health equity research grant from the initiative in 2020, a funding mechanism that was intended to support academic-community research partnerships with communities of color that were disproportionately impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. In partnership with the Northwest Tribal Epidemiology Center and Tacoma Community College, the WATRIBAL team sought to assess food insecurity and access to traditional foods experienced by Washington state’s 29 native tribes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The researchers developed and distributed a survey to 196 tribal members between March to April 2021. They evaluated multiple factors across Washington’s tribal population, including usage and sharing of traditional foods, use of food assistance programs and differences in food insufficiency between Washington residents on and off reservations.

Overall, their findings showed that food insecurity increased to 67% for these populations during the pandemic, highlighting the disproportionate inequities and barriers to access tribal communities face. Additionally, usage of food assistance programs drastically increased for these communities, with more off-reservation residents opting into these programs than on-reservation residents overall. Many residents also experienced limited access to traditional foods, and the way these foods were used and shared radically changed during COVID-19.

Looking ahead, the WATRIBAL team plans to expand this project by creating the NWTRIBAL survey to include tribal communities across Oregon and Idaho in addition to continuing their evaluation of Washington tribes.

Visit the Population Health Initiative website to learn more about this series and future events.