My Pilsen Food Pantry Experience

My IAFP UI-Pilsen Summer Externship was divided between clinic experience and service-learning experiences in poverty and food insecurity. As an undergraduate student at Notre Dame, I completed a Poverty Studies minor that included various service opportunities in both rural and urban communities, which is why I was so drawn to this externship. Throughout those four years, I witnessed firsthand how food insecurity and poverty intersect with chronic illness, mental health, and access to care. It was clear that medical care alone cannot resolve the root causes of poor health; social determinants such as hunger, housing instability, and lack of education must be addressed alongside clinical treatment. With this in mind, I’d like to share more about my time at the Pilsen Food Pantry.

The Pilsen Food Pantry is a very intentional organization that is well-connected to the communities that it serves. Notably, the pantry staff and volunteers include people who speak the languages of those who come for assistance, which helps create a safe and comfortable environment. I was especially amazed to see how the pantry provides so much fresh produce, which is not necessarily the case in many places. People may see produce as like a “nice-ity” but it’s truly a necessity. With the abundance of fresh foods and a collaborative framework, the pantry plays an essential role in supporting its surrounding communities.

Every day at the pantry was an example of great teamwork. From getting the day started, throughout service, and cleaning up afterwards, the work would be impossible to do without a cohesive, motivated group of people with the same goal. I remember one day where teamwork was absolutely critical. We were short-staffed and there seemed to be a particularly high volume of attendees. I started to get stressed and I could tell that those around me were feeling the same way. The order forms began to accumulate, carts began to pile up, and it seemed like everyone had no choice but to focus on their own busy section. The produce aisle was always the busiest section, and I was stationed with the fruits.

All of a sudden, the volunteer tasked with the vegetables next to me, an elderly woman who had been serving at the pantry for years, stopped for a moment. “How about we do this together?” she asked, with a bead of sweat dripping down her forehead. She was clearly so busy completing her portion of the order form but still had the compassionate heart to extend help. I nodded and responded, “Sure thing! What were you thinking?” and from there, we were a well-oiled machine. As she read off her own food items, she began reading mine aloud so that I could get a head start on pulling fruits out of crates before the cart came my way. When she was running low on certain foods, I would rush to the fridge and replace them for her, and she would do the same for me. When either of us started to fall behind even a little bit, we would help grab items from each other’s sections. Once we had a flow going, I began extending the same help to the section after me, the frozen items. In no time, we were back on track, and the day flew by as we successfully fulfilled every order before closing time.

I truly don’t think we would have been able to tackle that busy day without working together, and from then on, no matter which section I was in, I always worked to serve through a more collaborative lens.

The best part about this externship was how it pushed me to think about poverty and health concurrently, because there is no denying that the two are inextricably tied together.

Living in poverty forces individuals to make difficult trade-offs between basic needs like healthy foods, safe housing, and access to medical care, which in turn have direct and indirect effects on long-term health. Even having to make one of these trade-offs long-term can lead to devastating health outcomes. For example, a student from a low-income family might rely on cheap, processed foods in order to afford textbooks and school supplies. Over time, her poor diet could lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes, causing her to face serious health problems for the rest of her life. Should we scold her about her poor decisions and refuse to help her because she should have known the consequences of her trade-offs? Absolutely not. It is essential that we take extra steps in having compassion and understanding for those who did not win the “life lottery” because there are so many factors out of their control that force them into survival mode. When you’re in survival mode all the time, the focus of your decisions shifts from the future to the present. Making trade-offs becomes your norm, and this is something that I kept in mind at the pantry.

By the end of the externship, I had looked at hundreds of order forms. As the month went on, I had several opportunities to take the food outside to the awaiting crowd. Every form number I called out was met with a smile, and not once did I see someone blindly take a box and leave. From re-sorting the food items to carefully packing them away, I realized what I was really looking at each time an order form came into my hands. Every checkmark was a decision made.

Do I need this or not? Do I want this or not? Can I fit this into my car? Can I carry everything home? Do I have the space to store everything?

Sure, it would probably be easier to make pre-packaged boxes and hand them out, but by giving them blank boxes to check, we were giving them freedom of choice. Though it’s not possible for attendees to walk the pantry aisles themselves, they are given the chance to choose which items they need and want. Maybe it’s the only choice they were able to make that day.

I recognized the true weight of each form and each checkmark, and I am so appreciative to have had this opportunity to reflect and gain a better understanding of what it means to be a human trying to survive in this unfair world.

Throughout this externship, I gained understanding of what it means to not only heal, but to feed, nourish, and clothe surrounding communities. I always wondered how I could serve the people around me as a physician, and this experience provided a strong foundation and starting point for this dream. From seeing the registration process, organizing the pantry’s contents, packing orders, handing out boxes of food, and cleaning up, it’s clear that it truly takes a big-hearted village to serve a community warmly and effectively. Finding people from different backgrounds and talents with the same goal is a big reason why the pantry is such a success. I hope to find and foster such a village when it’s my turn to provide patient care and care for the person behind the “patient.”

About Pilsen Food Pantry:  The Pilsen Food Pantry was founded by the Figueroa Wu Family Foundation in 2018. The pantry is an extension of the Foundation’s mission to bring anti-poverty services into areas of unmet need. The Figueroa-Wu Foundation was created by IAFP members Evelyn Figueroa, MD and Alex Wu, MD. Both are IAFP members and both come from immigrant families affected by poverty and discrimination and have spent their careers caring for vulnerable populations. Dr. Figueroa developed the UI and Pilsen Food Pantry Summer Externship Experience in 2022 and serves as the preceptor each summer, combining clinical family medicine exposure, service learning and health equity advocacy. She also received the IAFP President's Award in 2024 from then president Emma Daisy, MD. Lucia Cho is her fourth IAFP summer extern. 

The Family Health Foundation Summer Externship Experience is supported in part by a matching grant from the AAFP Foundation. Funds for the Foundation to match the AAFP Summer Externship grants were provided by UIC, Gibson Area Hospital and a grant from the AAFP Foundation Family Medicine Chapter Alliance, which is funded by members like you!
Help programs like this continue to support family medicine by giving to the FMPC. Select “Chapter Grants” when making your gift online (www.aafpfoundation.org).