ABSTRACT
This chapter acts as a unique guide for students, colleagues in public sector roles, and those new to applied local food insecurity research. Investigating (i) the local stressors that amplify national drivers of food insecurity and (ii) identifying the local resources and facilitators to mitigate it (as outlined in Chapter 4) requires a place-based and mixed methods approach. The food aid landscape is complex and has moved far beyond emergency food provision, which presents challenges for researchers. We explain and illustrate the range of local stressors and the varied formats of food aid now on offer, and the difficulties this causes in terms of measurement and intervention. Here we use examples from our previous work, with noted areas for improvement. We outline the co-development of research with non-academic partners as a critical step in devising projects that reflect locality and population specific situations; this is aligned to wider research on the social determinants of health that acknowledges context-specific population and area characteristics.
