Under Colleges Building Community banner, colleges will cooperate to package 25,000 meals for Scranton School District families

Students from Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine (GCSOM), Keystone College, Marywood University, Lackawanna College, University of Scranton and the University of the Sciences will spend the day at GCSOM on Sept. 5 creating a living case study centered on how food insecurity impacts community and then, from 1 to 4 p.m., packaging 25,000 meals that will be distributed to families in the Scranton School District. Families in the Scranton schools identified may sign up for the program. On Fridays, the student is then given enough meals to feed the entire family for the weekend. School officials say that last year’s effort kept the families fed from September to February.

On Sept. 5, building on the success of the 10,000-meal initiative, Geisinger’s Springboard Healthy Scranton initiative and local nonprofit, Here for a Reason will share data on food insecurity in Scranton. Then students will assemble the meals to be distributed this fall to families with children at schools in the Scranton School District. At the schools targeted, a staggering 100 percent of enrolled children qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, increasing the likelihood that their families struggle with food insecurity – a serious obstacle to learning, as well as a social determinant of health that is well within the power of communities to change.

For more information, visit geisinger.edu/collegesbuildingcommunity.

About Geisinger
Geisinger is among the nation’s leading providers of value-based care, serving 1.2 million people in urban and rural communities across Pennsylvania. Founded in 1915 by philanthropist Abigail Geisinger, the non-profit system generates $10 billion in annual revenues across 134 care sites - including 10 hospital campuses, and Geisinger Health Plan, with 600,000 members in commercial and government plans. The Geisinger College of Health Sciences educates more than 5,000 medical professionals annually and conducts more than 1,400 clinical research studies. With 26,000 employees, including 1,600 employed physicians, Geisinger is among Pennsylvania’s largest employers with an estimated economic impact of $14 billion to the state’s economy. On March 31, 2024, Geisinger became the first member of Risant Health, a new nonprofit charitable organization created to expand and accelerate value-based care across the country.  Learn more at geisinger.org or connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X.