How Orion Bell Is Helping To Address The Growing Challenge Of Food Insecurity

There is a need to raise awareness. Food insecurity is about access to high quality food. It’s also about nutrition education: what to eat, how to prepare meals. There is also a need for hands-on support.

In many parts of the United States, there is a crisis of people having limited reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. As prices rise, this problem will likely become more acute. How can this problem be solved? Who are the leaders helping to address this crisis?

In this interview series, we are talking to leaders who are helping to address the increasing problem of food insecurity who can share the initiatives they are leading to address and solve this problem.

As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Orion Bell.

Orion Bell is President and Chief Executive Officer at Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging. He joined Benjamin Rose in 2019 with more than 30 years of leadership experience in not-for-profit management. Prior to joining Benjamin Rose, he served as President and Chief Executive Officer at CICOA Aging and In-Home Solutions, the largest of Indiana’s 16 Area Agencies on Aging.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

My back story is pretty accidental. I didn’t set out to be in aging services. I always worked in nonprofits. I was with the Red Cross for many years and oversaw a lot of community programs. We operated transportation services. We ran an adult day program that we started while I was there. We had family caregiver support programs, so even though I was in an organization that you didn’t necessarily think of initially as being a senior-serving agency, we actually did a lot of programming for older adults. So, when I went to work for an Area Agency on Aging, I knew about the programming and the services. If you had asked me a decade earlier if that was my career path, I wouldn’t have thought this is where I would be. But I’d always had some involvement with aging and disability-related services. Transportation programs brought me in contact with a lot of people with transit needs: senior centers, the meal sites, medical transport, that was all a part of it.

The other influence for me is I grew up in a household with a brother with profound developmental and physical disabilities. He grew up at home, in really the first generation where that was even possible. That made me more aware of the challenges for families and caregivers. There are many parallels between the conversations you have about supports for older adults and supports for people with developmental and physical disabilities, especially as it relates to things like family caregiving, which is a big focus here at Benjamin Rose. So that’s sort of the back story. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but I think a lot of us are in that boat.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

This story highlights the importance of advocacy. A few years ago, I was working on a ballot initiative to get a dedicated tax on the books to pay for public transit and expand the program. There were a lot of conversations with folks with disabilities who were advocating for the initiative. But the public forums would be at City Hall, at the city council meetings which would be in the evening. It was a transit issue, and the people who needed the public transit couldn’t go to City Hall to testify because there was no transit to get them there. We used cab vouchers and rideshares to help people, because the only way they could get to the meeting was to take a cab. A big piece of it was helping the consumer advocate for something that they needed, and that’s not always the way the narrative gets spun. It may be presented as, “it’s a feeble person, this person who can’t do things.” But often what you’re doing is you’re helping the person be heard, so they have a voice. They had a better story to tell. That’s a part of the work; you’re helping facilitate somebody else’s ability to participate.

Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?

I was fortunate to work within organizations that were successful before I got there. But in terms of sort of success, I think it is important to focus on metrics and results — “reach and revenue, quality and quantity.” I’m a big fan of Jim Collins and his book Good to Great. He writes about persistence and understanding what an organization needs to do well. For a nonprofit — did we serve more people? Did we have more impact? Is our funding adequate, and our programs sustainable? Did we increase the number of services provided? Did our quality improve? It’s about our current work and our capacity in the future.

At Benjamin Rose, the tipping point came for me during the pandemic. As a social services organization, we had to adapt quickly as community sites closed due to COVID. This meant we had to close senior centers and meal sites, cancel classes and reconsider how we delivered services that always emphasized community engagement and getting people together. As the pandemic dragged on, the staff talked about flexibility and creativity in fulfilling our mission.

Despite disruptions, we were able to find reasons to celebrate. We expanded caregiver support programs and other virtual services. We doubled the capacity of our home-delivered meals programs and launched a new medically-tailored meals program. And we found creative ways to deliver existing services and connect with clients. As the year came to a close, we achieved a record number of people served and eliminated an operating deficit. It was a team effort, and one that was built by focusing on fundamentals.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I was fortunate to have had a great mentor early in my career. He saw it as his responsibility to mentor people and to encourage them to grow in their career. He encouraged me to go back to school and get my master’s, encouraged me to apply for jobs and promotions. He believed it was part of his job to promote and encourage people to make a career in the organization. He was very interested in my success. And I wasn’t the only person he did that for. And that was important for a couple of reasons. One, it was helpful to me when I was young and it was a great example to try to follow. When you get to the position of responsibility or authority, you should be invested in others. When someone moves on, they leave with fond memories of working there. They can be goodwill ambassadors in their new roles. It’s important to promote that and encourage it, and make time for it, to be interested in the professional growth and development of those around you. I’ve always been grateful for that.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Success requires consistency, empathy, and a bit of humility.

Consistency is important. If you begin a new program, you need to commit to it. Commit to doing it well, but also to doing it consistently. A basic service, like providing meals, has to be reliable. It can’t be hit or miss. Part of the planning is about the start-up, but what keeps it going? Is there funding? Is the space available? Is it accessible? Reliable? Once I begin, can I continue? Several years ago, we started a voucher program so that local restaurants could provide meals. For that to work, we had to make sure the meals met our nutritional guidelines. We had to make sure the system was easy to use. We needed to show the vendors that it was worth the extra effort and that they would get paid. All of this had to happen before we gave out the first voucher. A decade later there are multiple sites, and the program continues to be a source of healthy food for those who don’t have access to a senior center.

Empathy is good customer service. Would I use this service? Would I like the way I was treated? We use client surveys and comments to help improve the programs and update menus. At one point we began offering a frozen meal option on some of our routes. It was partly a financial decision, but we worried about the effect of delivering multiple meals rather than a daily delivery. But we found that many clients preferred the option of a weekly or twice weekly delivery. It gave them more choices regarding when they ate a meal or which meal to eat that day. It gave them more flexibility to schedule appointments around our deliveries. Rather than a negative, many saw it as an improvement in quality. Understanding what the person wanted or needed, and not just what I thought they wanted or needed, helped make the program better. It also helped our resources go further and serve more people than before.

And success requires humility. You need to accept that you can do things better. It can be tempting to be satisfied with “feeling good about doing good.” But is it good enough? Can I do better? Someone else may have a better idea, a better plan. Good ideas come from many sources, but that doesn’t matter if you don’t listen. A volunteer’s suggestion changed how we distributed commodity boxes. A client connected us with a vendor who provided kosher meals. A VISTA volunteer developed a cooking class based on the seasonal produce distributed by the food bank. Someone else may know more or have more experience, so put that energy to use.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” — Peter Drucker

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Can you describe to our readers how your work is helping to address the challenge of food insecurity?

For our population, food insecurity arises for multiple reasons. For some, it is because they live in “food deserts,” and don’t have access to a grocery store. For others, it could be that because of a financial challenge, they have difficulty paying for food because high quality food is expensive. And for others, it is a matter of ability. If shopping is difficult, if food preparation is difficult, that becomes a factor. It’s not just the lack of access physically or financially, but also effort to plan the meal out and prepare it properly. In our work, we sometimes hear of older adults who are choosing between buying food or buying meds. That shouldn’t happen to anyone.

Food insecurity is also about social isolation. Some people don’t eat well because they just don’t have the drive. Our research tells us that two thirds of people who are on a home meal delivery route report that the only person they talked to that day is the driver that delivered their meal. We operate senior centers at Benjamin Rose. For many of our participants, lunch at the center is the only meal they don’t eat alone. Meals and mealtimes also fill a social need. For older adults, food insecurity and social isolation are all wrapped together.

Even if there’s a grocery store nearby and you have food stamps, or you go to the food pantry or have a free delivery service, that doesn’t always do it for older adults. Over half of the older adults that are admitted to the hospital have some degree of malnutrition. Thinking about food insecurity, it is about the calories, but it’s more than that. It’s not enough having a food pantry or enrolling somebody in food stamps. We also need to consider what else is lacking when someone is not eating well.

Can you share something about your work that makes you most proud? Is there a particular story or incident that you found most uplifting?

One of the things that drew me to Benjamin Rose as an organization is that we are a strong local service provider, but we’re also very much involved in applied research and policy conversations about these issues. Not just food insecurity, but topics like family caregiver support and elder justice.

We are part of projects that promote family caregiver supports on a national level. One example is Best Practice Caregiving, our partnership with the Family Caregiver Alliance, that has helped connect communities around the country with information on evidence-based programs for caregivers and how to incorporate these into service delivery models in health plans and health systems. The project has helped raise awareness of issues facing family caregivers and has also had an impact on public policy discussions.

We’re fortunate that the Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging exists. There is a great team of people here that are dedicated to our mission. This is a great place to work, and when it comes to aging programs and community impact, it’s hard to think of any place that offers a better platform to do that.

In your opinion, what should other business and civic leaders do to further address these problems? Can you please share a few things that can be done to further address the problem of food insecurity?

There is a need to raise awareness. Food insecurity is about access to high quality food. It’s also about nutrition education: what to eat, how to prepare meals. There is also a need for hands-on support. There are a lot of ways that people can participate. We have volunteers who help with meal deliveries or help with preparing meals. Others have stepped up to make wellness calls and address social isolation. Organizations like Benjamin Rose, including other Meals on Wheels programs and local food banks, all have volunteer opportunities. That’s the way that people can be directly involved. It can be a great team building project for companies and it’s an opportunity for individuals to make a difference.

Are there other leaders or organizations who have done good work to address the challenge of food scarcity? Can you tell us what they have done? What specifically impresses you about their work? Perhaps we can reach out to them to include them in this series.

Bob Blancato at the National Association of Nutrition and Aging Services Programs; Dave Miner, who was active in establishing the Indy Hunger Network when I lived in Indianapolis; and Jim Morris, who was Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme from 2002–2007 and has a long history of advocacy on hunger and food insecurity.

The Indy Hunger Network is a collaboration of many area food providers, funders and governmental agencies. Focused on hunger as a common goal, we found ways to build capacity and address policies on hunger and food access. The group helped promote summer feeding programs for kids and promote access to SNAP. An AmeriCorps VISTA project helped promote nutrition education and cooking skills. We advocated for sound public policy at the local, state and national level. We secured funding to strengthen the pantry network and ensure that food was available throughout the Greater Indianapolis area, and we built upon collaborative efforts that grew the resources of the participating members and demonstrated a growth in service delivery and a reduction in food insecurity through our efforts.

If you had the power to influence legislation, are there laws that you would like to see introduced that might help you in your work?

We need to have realistic conversations about what it means to get older. As we age, we are more likely to require assistance with activities of daily living or accessing healthcare. Many people operate on the assumption that when they reach retirement age, that Medicare and Social Security are going to take care of medical needs, but they don’t. Neither pays for long-term care needs. We have some safety net programs. Ohio has a strong network, but there are waiting lists for many programs. 85% of older adults lack the financial resources to pay for long-term care over an extended period and one of the keys to keeping people healthy is ensuring access to a high-quality diet.

Aside from the costs of care, we also need to look at the regulatory environment. Most public programs are means tested. That can make it difficult for an older adult to access support. Even after qualifying for benefits, some states place limitations on programs that require frequent requalification or reenrollment. Frail older adults on fixed incomes are unlikely to have life events that increase their income or improve their health to the point that they would no longer qualify for support, but in many cases, they are required to complete requalification every year. I would like to see legislators try to look at it from a different perspective. Eligibility regulations frustrate the efforts of older adults and their family members to provide care and ensure that lives are lived with dignity. We should not make it this difficult to care for our loved ones.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.

1.) Even though you’re not a business, you have to do things in a business-like way. You have to get the mechanics right. Otherwise, it’s just good intentions. Your heart has to be in the right place, but you also have to be an effective manager and understand the importance of that.

2.) No money, no mission. You have to think about the resources required to do something, and be practical.

3.) I don’t have to know your motivation. I need to find my “why,” but I don’t have to understand your reason for doing what you do. People get attached to causes for a variety of reasons, but I can’t see inside why you do what you do.

4.) Always look for common ground. That means that sometimes you work with people that are not necessarily in agreement with everything you do, or don’t have the same approach that you do. But you have to be able to collaborate and compromise. You look for what you have in common. And build from there.

5.) Collaboration is key. Successful programs are built on partnerships. The Indy Hunger Network brought together donors, government agencies and nonprofit organizations. We got past competing for resources and focused on building capacity.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

In recent years we have had a lot of public conversation about infrastructure and what infrastructure is. Is it just roads and bridges? No. I would love to be able to get more engagement and more interest around public health. Some of the lifespan questions that we talked about already, the questions about food insecurity, all of those are the social determinants of health.

I’d like to see more support for the idea that an investment in public health is an investment in the country, because it’s an investment in quality of life and community. If you could raise that one level to think about public health as an aspiration, a goal to achieve as opposed to thinking about public health as a department in the government. There would be a global benefit in that.

A good place to start is to think about quality of life at a neighborhood level. What makes neighborhoods and communities? Focusing on that as a measure of economic development. Growth and development, absolutely, but also making sure that that neighborhood and livability are a part of it.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a conversation with Terry Gross. At least for an hour, you’d feel like the most fascinating person in the world. I listen to Fresh Air and she always has interesting guests. It would be fun to have a conversation with her because of all the conversations she’s had with great people.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

For more information on Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging, you can visit our website at benrose.org. Also, every second Wednesday of the month I provide an organizational update from 9–10 a.m. via Zoom; registration is available on our website.

This was very meaningful, thank you so much, and we wish you only continued success.