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The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from two recent reviews on food aid use in the UK and discuss their implications and the challenges they posed for researchers, policy makers and the voluntary and community sector.

The paper draws on two research reviews conducted in 2013 and 2014.

Whilst it is possible to draw important insights into key drivers of food aid use, how food aid is draw on by recipients and some of the perceived outcomes of the provision from the research that is available, ultimately the reviews highlight the emergent and largely unsystematic nature of the UK evidence base. The lack of agreed definitions and measures of food insecurity/food poverty further limits the knowledge base. Even where such evidence may be forthcoming, in terms of implementing effective solutions to the need for food aid, UK researchers, policy makers, NGOs and others face considerable challenges in terms of identifying responsibilities for addressing the causes of this need, which the most effective scale for response may be (local or national) and finally, overcoming a highly complex and not necessarily co-ordinated policy framework.

The paper provides a critical overview of the state of knowledge on food aid in the UK.

Access to food is currently on the political agenda. This paper presents a quantitative method for local level use to help identify the geographic location of areas with inadequate access to food. A census of retail outlets selling food of any kind was carried out in a deprived area within a 2km radius from a central point between two estates. Information on the price and availability of “healthy” food lists, acceptable to each of the four major ethnic groups in the area, was collected. The food lists were not mutually exclusive. Food shops were mapped in terms of food availability and price indices using Geographical Information System (GIS) software. Maps show, progressively: roads within/outside 500m of a postcode with any outlet selling food; any outlet selling more than 50 per cent of the food list, below the area mean price, acceptable to a Gujarati Hindu; the latter in relation to population density. Within the area analysed there appears to be reasonable walking access to the more reasonably priced shops within the area, however the cost of a healthy diet would still require more than 50 per cent of the income of someone in receipt of income support.

What can it be like to lead a life where the future is as unpredictable as the throw of a dice, where the balance of life rests on a knife edge between adequate food and starvation?

A number of food poverty definitions have been identified by academics and various government organisations globally; however, there exists no government-endorsed definition of food poverty in the United Kingdom (UK), and there remains a gap regarding how relevant current food poverty definitions are in the Northern Ireland (NI)/UK contexts.

Interviews (n = 19) with a range of stakeholders (e.g. policymakers, politicians, community advice centre workers, consumer sub-group representatives, food bank and food redistribution organisation representatives) were conducted to examine (1) the usefulness of a food poverty definition, (2) what a food poverty definition should include and (3) the applicability of an existing definition (Radimer et al., 1992) in the NI/UK context. Data was thematically analysed using QSR NVivo (v.12).

Definition was considered important to increase awareness and understanding. Any consideration of revising the Radimer et al. (1992) definition, or of establishing a new standardised definition, should seek to reduce/remove ambiguity and subjectivity of terminology used (i.e. more clearly defining what the terms “adequate”, “sufficient”, “quality” and “socially acceptable ways” mean in this context).

This research emphasises the importance of appropriately conceptually defining social phenomena such as food poverty, as a first step to constructing and reviewing measurement approaches and ultimately assessing predictors and recommending solutions.

This research addresses the gap relating to stakeholders’ opinion on food poverty definition and contributes recommendations for modifying the Radimer et al. (1992) definition in the NI/UK and present-day contexts.

Data from the Northern Ireland (NI) Health Survey 2014/15 (n = 2,231) were statistically analysed to examine the prevalence of food insecurity according to both indicators. Pearson's X² test for association and logistic regressions were used to examine associations between food security status and predictor variables.

Household food insecurity has been identified as a significant societal issue in both developed and developing nations, but there exists no universal indicator to approximate its prevalence. In NI, two indicators (United States Household Food Security Survey Module [HFSSM] and the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions [EU-SILC] food deprivation questions) have been used. This study examines how both indicators differ in their classification of food insecurity prevalence in a population sample and also examines the relationship between various demographic and household factors and food security status.

According to the EU-SILC food deprivation questions, 8.3% (n = 185) were indicated to be food insecure, while according to the HFSSM, 6.5% (n = 146) were indicated to be food insecure. The HFSSM and EU-SILC regression models differed in the underlying variables they identified as significant predictors of food insecurity. Significant variables common to both modules were tenure, employment status, health status, anxiety/depression and receipt of benefits.

Findings can inform policy action with regards to targeting the key contributors and can inform policy decisions in NI and elsewhere with regards to choosing the most appropriate food insecurity indicator.

A university without an academic library is unimaginable since the library serves as a pivot for both learning and research. Freeman (2005), while talking about the importance of a library in academic life, stated that it holds a unique position, symbolizing the heart of the institution. A good library is not only one that stacks printed material or has portals to access online resources but also provides a flexible learning space with reading rooms, facilitates discussion and encourages collaborative learning and scholarship. With limited resources, it is increasingly difficult for universities to allocate funds to re-design library spaces. Modern academic libraries have to respond not only to pedagogical changes but also to technological changes, accommodating them in the library space design and management. Modern libraries are trying to integrate features of the traditional form of learning as well as the digital form. This book will present case studies and empirical evidence discussing the changing face of libraries. It will talk about re-modeling of existing libraries with the help of new architectural design to utilize the space and inculcate the digital literacy development. Scholars discuss, in the chapters, how they meet users’ needs and how they use in stakeholders’ inputs to design innovative library spaces.

Data were collected from a range of stakeholders in Northern Ireland including consumer representatives, policy makers and public health representatives. Data collection occurred in two phases: firstly via in-depth interviews (n = 19), and secondly via roundtables (n = 4) with stakeholders (n = 36) using nominal group technique.

Food poverty has been identified as a significant societal and public health problem in the UK, evidenced in part by published statistics on the prevalence of food poverty, and the well-documented increase in the uptake of food bank provision. This paper presents various theoretical perspectives regarding the aetiology of (food) poverty, followed by stakeholders' opinions on the contributors to food poverty and consideration of how these align with various theoretical perspectives.

Various individual, structural and political factors were identified by stakeholders as contributors to food poverty, with income largely agreed to be the most significant contributor. Two themes of contributors were identified during analysis: micro-level and individual-level contributors and macro-level and economic-level contributors. Structural factors were most commonly cited as contributors to food poverty during both stakeholder interviews and stakeholder roundtables, followed by individual factors and political factors.

Understanding the contributors to food poverty can inform targeted policy action.

There is a lack of theoretical and conceptual literature regarding the causes of food poverty, and there has to date been limited research on the contributors to food poverty in Northern Ireland/the United Kingdom.

The unglamorous leek is an everyday foodstuff in a British supermarket, but its meaning is constructed through the interplay of a range of non-human materialities including the plant, its packaging and its information dense labels. This chapter examines the variations in the ways in which leeks are marketed in different supermarkets, with a particular focus on how they can be traced back to their roots in British fields. We examine the ways in which non-human and virtual entities ‘bring to life’ the human producers of the leeks in a bid to mimic the reconnection that is sought through local food systems. We use the example of the leeks to explore what is happening to food supply chains, urban-rural connections and rural representations as farmers and retailers build new modes of working and as social media tools open up virtual access to the people growing our food.

Every seaport with foreign‐going shiping trade has always had its “foreign” quarters; every large city hat had its Oriental traders and services, eg., Chinese laundries, Indian restaurants, Italian restaurants, greengrocers, ice cream and biscuit manufacturers; all of which has meant that foreign foods were not unknown to food inspectors and the general public in its discerning quest for exotic food dishes. It was then largely a matter of stores specially stocking these foods for their few users. Now it is no longer the coming and going of the foreign seaman, the isolated laundry, restaurant, but large tightly knit communities of what have come to be known as the “ethnic minorities”, from the large scale immigration of coloured peoples from the old Empire countries, who have brought their families, industry and above all their food and eating habits with them. Feeding the ethnic minorities has become a large and expanding area within the food industry. There are cities in which large areas have been virtually taken over by the immigrant.

Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health officials were concerned with the relatively lower rates of uptake among certain racial/ethnic minority groups. We suggest that this may also be patterned by racial/ethnic residential segregation, which previous work has demonstrated to be an important factor for both health and access to health care.

In this study, we examine county-level vaccination rates, racial/ethnic composition, and residential segregation across the U.S. We compile data from several sources, including the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) measured at the county level.

We find that just looking at the associations between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, both percent Black and percent White are significant and negative, meaning that higher percentages of these groups in a county are associated with lower vaccination rates, whereas the opposite is the case for percent Latino. When we factor in segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, the patterns change somewhat. Dissimilarity itself was not significant in the models across all groups, but when interacted with race/ethnic composition, it moderates the association. For both percent Black and percent White, the interaction with the Black-White dissimilarity index is significant and negative, meaning that it deepens the negative association between composition and the vaccination rate.

The analysis is only limited to county-level measures of racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, so we are unable to see at the individual-level who is getting vaccinated.

We find that segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, suggesting that local race relations in a county helps contextualize the compositional effects of race/ethnicity.