This paper critically reviews the expanding literature on applications of sustainability to healthcare policy and planning. It argues that the concept has been overgeneralized and has become a buzzword masking disparate agendas. It ignores the insights of the newest generation of systems theory on complex systems on the ubiquity of far-from-equilibrium conditions. Yet, a central meaning often ascribed to sustainability is the level continuation of healthcare programs and their institutionalization. Sustainability is only coherent in health care when it is more narrowly delimited to involve public health and treated as only one of several evaluative criteria that informs not only the continuation of programs but more often their expansion or contraction as needs dynamically change.
Hunger in the United States has become commonplace. Food pantries are now regularly used by millions of people. Once thought to be used by the destitute, today they are frequented by families, students, the elderly people who hold full-time jobs, and people who thought they would never have to seek assistance to have enough to eat. Viewing food pantries as a major foodways resource, this study focuses on how a New England food pantry seeks to give not just food but also integrity, respect, and hope. It employed a client satisfaction survey as part of an evaluation of the effectiveness of their food pantry and used the data for organizational transformation. This study shows how organizations can destigmatize the requesting food process and provide services in a humane way that treats hungry people as neighbors and friends, not burdens and failures.
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