Since 2023, Healthy Champaign County (HCC), a nonprofit comprised of campus and community members working to ensure all residents have access to nutritional food and other resources to make healthy lifestyle choices, has convened the Feeding Champaign County Food Summit. More than 100 leaders representing organizations across the county come together annually to discuss the community’s needs and find ways to coordinate their efforts; and yearly, the issue of how to address the needs of specific communities within Champaign persists.
In light of their conversations around the needs of specific communities, HCC members Richard (Ric) Weibl and Traci Barkley wanted to get a better understanding of how older adults experience food access and insecurity in Champaign County. Weibl, an IHSI affiliate who serves on the HCC board and Barkley, the director of Sola Gratia Farm, partnered with IHSI affiliate Minakshi (Mina) Raj, a professor of health and kinesiology, to conduct a countywide needs assessment in 2025. Community-Academic Scholars Rena Amarteifio, a rising senior majoring in Human Development and Family Studies, and Lara Terpetschnig, a rising senior majoring in Information Sciences + Data Science, were selected to assist with the project.
Weibl and Barkley lent their expertise on accessible and sustainable food systems to shape this community-driven project. They were involved in developing the research plan, including formulating questions, determining sites to visit, and providing important feedback and guidance to the undergraduate scholars.
The community partners were thrilled with what the scholars were able to accomplish over the summer. Weibl spoke more about the experience at the annual poster session and celebration.
“It's important to note that our two wonderful scholars were all over the city, participating as observers and volunteering, watching how meals got distributed and who was doing it, how the transactions took place and all those kinds of things that were made possible by a whole bunch of other people that aren't here and aren't represented, but their names are on the poster. You can learn more about that by following up with the scholars because they are now experts in a service area that most students are never even aware exists throughout their time at the university,” he shared.
Weibl also expressed how support from the IHSI team enhanced the partnership, including a workshop with IHSI Senior Research Development Manager Maggie Berg, who shared her expertise in mentoring and professional development with workshop attendees.
“It was really nice as a community person to have that kind of experience,” he continued. “So, all of them helped make it easy for this to happen. In the end, the work that Rena and Lara did is going to help our organizations to better serve the residents of Champaign County.”