Northside Food Pantry: Interviews
The Northside Food Pantry at 1601 Brighton Road is a food pantry run by the Northside Common Ministries in Pittsburgh that serves over 1,845 households made up of 9,956 people. The Northside Food Pantry serves primarily seniors, veterans and families who live in the 15212, 15214 and 15233 Zip Codes in Pittsburgh. Depending on household size and their income level, pantry users receive a set amount of food and can visit once a month.
Food Pantries typically serve individuals and families earning less than 150% of the federal poverty line.
As our group chose to focus on minority grandparents who serve as the primary caregivers of children with asthma, we decided to use the Northside Food Pantry as a site for preliminary exploratory interviews since it provides access to this target audience. We chose to focus on minority caregivers because asthma disproportionately affects those populations (see our “Lines of Discovery” post). We also chose to focus on grandparents because more grandparents are living with grandchildren in general and among these, a significant share act as their grandchild’s primary caregiver. In addition, grandparents living at home with grandchildren are more likely to be a minority.
Our goals for interviewing grandparents at the Northside Food Pantry were to explore the following questions:
- What is your responsibility with your grandchild?
- How do you manage your grandchild’s health?
- How do you like to receive information about your grandchild’s health?
- Do you communicate with other service providers?
- What’s your relationship with other community members/caregivers?
To recruit participants, we hung a sign in the pantry and provided $10 Giant Eagle gift cards as incentives. We had four gift cards and were able to interview four grandparents.
Our first interview was with a grandparent whose grandson is four years old. He takes care of his grandson every weekend. Asthma runs in his family however he was never was diagnosed or experienced asthma. He manages his grandson’s health by watching what he eats and slowing him down. He doesn’t want to treat his grandson differently than other children and encourages participation in sports such as basketball and wrestling. He takes precaution about what his grandson eats and stays alert for signs of over exhaustion (tells to slow down when grandchild moves around too much). His grandson has had some asthma attacks in the winter and summer time but he expressed that he doesn’t know what to do. He has never taken his grandchild to the hospital him self and didn’t know if his grandchildren had an inhaler or took any medication. But the parents are usually there when his grandson experiences asthma attacks. He wishes there was a hotline where he could get information as well as strategies to get his grandson involved in his own health. Like the others who we interviewed, he believed eventually when you get older you will graduate from asthma. He was enthusiastic about getting to know more about asthma and asked us where he could get that information. He also wished to see more teachers to be informed of asthma because he was worried that they wouldn’t know what to do when his grandchildren experienced an asthma attack for example at a field trip. He was also enthusiastic about a smartphone app and to be able to learn about stages of asthma or seek guidance when he doesn’t know what to do with asthma attacks. However when we asked if he’d feel comfortable navigating through an app he said “a little bit, my daughter will help me with that”. When he takes his grandson to the playground, 60% of caregivers seem to be grandparents. He interacts with other grandparents in the local playground and discuss who’s bad and who’s not good(grandchildren). His also told us that his grandson behaves well around him, but not around other caregivers.
Our second interview was with a great grandmother who has asthma herself. She was diagnosed with asthma in her twenties and said it was hereditary in her fathers side of the family. Her granddaughter is two and was diagnosed with asthma when she was born. She takes care for her grandchildren sometimes. She makes sure her granddaughter takes her medicine. She also smokes on the porch instead of in the house. She also makes sure her granddaughter doesn’t run herself into exhaustion, but other than that doesn’t take any other precautions. In the summer time asthma symptoms doesn’t act up but as winter comes around symptoms such as wheezing or mucus buildup starts getting worse. Her granddaughter knows she can’t run like other kids. She hopes her granddaughter will grow out of it. She thinks an app may be useful but internet and computer literacy may be a challenge. She thinks the community doesn’t have awareness of asthma and how serious it can be. She had a close friend who passed away from asthma and wishes people took the medical condition more seriously. She was enthusiastic about the idea of med students coming to the community(food pantry) to hand out pamphlets to help spread information and hold consulting sessions in the waiting room.
Our third interview was with a grandmother who has asthma. Asthma runs in his family. Her granddaughters, who are five years old twins, went to the hospital with a cold and was diagnosed there with asthma. She has sole custody of her grandchildren and is involved in their daily life. However, she doesn’t know how to manage their asthma and the doctor didn’t provide any information. She doesn’t ask questions or take extra precautions. Dust seems to be a trigger. She doesn’t want to give the children medication because they are too young. She uses a smartphone and receives information in the mail and over the phone. Her grandchildren don’t know they have asthma but she would like them to. She doesn’t know how to teach them about their medical condition. She’d like to be able to have a community based support service to talk about how to support grandchildren with asthma.
Our fourth interview was with a grandfather who has suffered since birth and still suffers from severe condition of asthma. Thus, he knows the signs of asthma very well and can promptly tell when his grandchild shows asthma symptoms and is knowledgeable about the respective treatment as well. He has seen fresh cut grass, pollen, winter, cool air, or hot and muggy weather all seem to be triggers to him and his grand child. Because he experienced asthma and still experiences the symptoms he knows how to take caution regarding asthma and didn’t seem to be worried about his grandchild being neglected of care regarding asthma. He doesn’t provide limitations in terms of sports. He mentioned newsletters to be a good medium to receive any kind of information and wanted to be informed of new and improved asthma treatment/medication for his grandchild and he also showed potential enthusiasm to lead community support sessions as he is very knowledge in this area.
In the short term, these interviews will help us develop personas that will inform our stakeholder map, journey map, and value flow diagram. As such, they will be the foundation for all of our subsequent design decisions regarding our service design solution.
